


Tabula Rasa

by Maedlin



Series: Ex Libris Infinitum [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, BAMF Friday (Marvel), BAMF JARVIS, BAMF Tony Stark, Comic Book Science, Computer Programming, Dubious Science, Friday Deserves Nice Things, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Saving the World, Stark Industries, Subterfuge, Time Travel, Tony Stark Has A Heart, everyday heroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2019-09-23 18:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maedlin/pseuds/Maedlin
Summary: Following the events at the Opening Ceremony of the Stark Expo, Tony has a new lease on life. He thinks he finally might be getting used to life in 2009, even.Of course, time waits for no one. It has certainly never waited for him, and it's high time that he began to properly reacquaint himself with old faces and familiar organizations. Easier said than done, perhaps.But forewarned is forearmed, and Tony has both in ample supply.(He can only hope it will be enough this time.)





	1. Nguyen-Widrow Method

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please give [CodenameCarrot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344071) all the love for her brilliant Marvel Periodic Table of the Elements. It's fantastic and well thought out, and I can only hope I've managed to do her work justice in adopting it as canonical for this story!

This custom analysis provides an intelligent method for weight initialization in neural networks, reducing training time substantially. (Nyugen & Widrow, 1989)

 

+++

 

May 29, 2009.

 

A Friday, of course.

 

_(Incidentally also known as “Don’t Fry Friday” thanks to the National Council on Skin Care Prevention.)_

 

(Yes, Tony _did_ in fact do his part in celebrating the holiday. Baskets of free travel-size sunscreen were gleefully scattered around the Expo grounds and SI’s various offices by volunteers.)

 

The day began at way-too-early o’clock with his sole scheduled obligation at the newly-renovated Los Angeles Chemical Engineering & Research Lab. His morning was reserved for the unofficial launch of Project 69.

 

 _Clearly, a codename fabulous on many,_ many _levels._

 

Shallow and unapologetically blatant immaturity? _Check!_

 

Functional but believable misdirection? _Check!_

 

It was a project staffed solely by chemists and physicists. Logically, one might conclude that the numerically-codenamed project might, in fact, be referencing a corresponding element.

 

Thulium, atomic number sixty-nine, just so happened to have applications in x-ray technologies.

 

In theory, something a company looking to make a name for itself in the medical tech industry just might be interested in.

 

_(Aww, isn’t that cute? But it’s wrong!)_

 

Objectively still descriptive and relevant to the true nature of the project? _Check!_

 

Tony struggled to smother the smug grin threatening to make an appearance.

 

_Yeah, he was rather pleased with himself on this one._

 

_“Sir, I believe you current expression might be termed ‘moderately disconcerting’ if viewed by your upcoming audience.”_

 

_“...Too much Stark raving mad?”_

 

_“Indubitably.”_

 

_“Spoilsport. But okay.”_

 

He schooled his expression into something more serious and adopted the confident, charismatic body language that he knew from experience was classed as ‘visionary genius’ rather than ‘mad scientist.’

 

(At this point, he felt he had enough experience with both roles to judge the difference.)

 

Of course, from the perspective of someone without the advantage of OATS and the corresponding knowledge of the future might well argue that Project 69 merited either title, if not both.

 

_(Or, perhaps, someone without the alternative advantage of being born in Wakanda.)_

 

After all, it wasn’t every day you fundamentally rewrote an entire branch of science.

 

The elevator was waiting for him when he approached. One of the many benefits of JARVIS’s complete integration within a building.

 

 _“Thus fulfilling my life dream of becoming a lift attendant,”_ JARVIS chimed in via the still-external replacement communicator fabricated the moment JARVIS had the spare cycles.

 

Tony laughed.

 

He considered the individuals waiting upstairs. There were twenty-seven, each hand-picked and thoroughly vetted. Thirteen doctors. Fourteen lab technicians, each well on their way to becoming top minds in their chosen field in their own right. There were eight physicists. Nineteen chemists. Ten women, seventeen men.

 

Seven tenured individuals who’d been with Stark Industries for years. Fifteen hired since Tony’s return, almost universally as a byproduct of OATS-related internal references. The remaining five were consultants. Carryover contacts from JARVIS’ efforts to recreate and then improve upon lithium dioxide, brought in with only the weight of Tony’s name and the promise of being involved in something _revolutionary._

 

Each was verifiably and empathetically _not_ HYDRA, nor were they SHIELD.

 

_My kingdom for direct physical access to SHIELD servers._

 

Dozens of candidates had been excluded because Tony and JARVIS hadn’t been able to unequivocally guarantee their complete independence from both groups.

 

Aside from Tony’s innermost circles, they were about to become the first set of people aware of the discovery and synthesis of starkanium.

 

Ultimately, that was only tangential. An interesting footnote to the greater picture, the heart of Project 69 that Tony called revolutionary. In this context, starkanium was merely evidence for a larger thesis.

 

First postulated around Wakanda during what was the Antebellum Era in America, the information had not become public knowledge Before until mid-2017. It was published on the heels of Wakanda coming out of the closet, part of an initial bout of scientific dialog released in the hopes of fostering goodwill. A component of a large package born of Realpolitik at its finest, meant to shape global opinion before it could turn against the small nation.

 

Using Before as a barometer, Tony expected no small degree of entertaining footage and audience reaction shots to come out the other side of this little talk.

 

_JARVIS, of course, was recording everything for posterity._

 

Before, the Wakandan brief had served as the acidic icing on the already-dubious cupcake that was Tony’s public and political life during that period. Coming on the heels of his disastrous… _mentorship…?_

 

_“Sir, I detected a spike in your heart rate?”_

 

_“Just… thinking about the kid. Peter.”_

 

Spider-Man and the teenager beneath the mask was still difficult to think about most days. His memories of the kid were at the core of the nightmarish mess of _shock-despair-grief-expectation-bordering-desire_ turned _desolation/resignation/emptiness_ at the tail end of his life Before.

 

Meeting the kid in the here and now, at least, had helped him move beyond the point where even glancing thoughts tended to devolve into outright panic attacks. The fight with Vanko, coupled with conversations with Pepper and JARVIS alongside an abbreviated playback of footage taped in the aftermath, had no doubt played a role in the change as well.

 

_(Parker never needed powers to be a hero.)_

 

In any case, coming only a few months after the arrest of the Vulture, for Tony the Wakandan brief had rekindled the flames of a fight he’d only just finished waging.

 

Because evidently, Tony Stark _must have_ known about Wakanda’s true technical capabilities all along.

 

Somehow.

 

And sure, the whole fiasco with the Black Panther _was_ a bit of a red flag. But honestly? He’d had a few other things on his mind at the time. Like, you know, carefully _not_ thinking about the most likely location of the hole the rogue Avengers had crawled into following their split over the Sokovia Accords. A tightrope of doublethink that had run actively _counter_ to any urges he might otherwise have felt to follow up on the technical discrepancy of the Black Panther. Plausible Deniability was the strongest layer of protection he’d been able to create at the time for both himself and his former… _friends? Colleagues? Allies?_ He’d worn the deliberate ignorance like a heavy cloak, gradually smothering the accusations until they were all but forgotten.

 

Forgotten, at least, until the Wakandan brief managed to reignite the debate. The renewed questions, of course, had also come with a bevy of new and exciting questions-cum-snide-commentary all their own.

 

 _No, it_ wasn’t _especially distressing to learn that his conclusions regarding Starkanium’s existence were incomplete. He’d_ known, _if not immediately than certainly once he’d learned of the Tesseract, that he was likely missing some crucial piece._

 

 _No,_ he hadn’t predicted the actual explanation. Yes, Thor loved to drop mind-blowing knowledge into casual conversation, but he was equally liable to play up the ignorant assumptions caused by his appearance and entirely alien culture. Somehow, atomic theory had never quite come up.

 

Sorry, folks. Tony was a genius, _not_ omnipotent. Yes, he was shocked to realize it as well.

 

 _And dammit, no, he was not_ mad _someone else ‘got there first.’ His doctoral research scarcely touched on atomic theory. He was an_ engineer _at heart, not a scientist!_

 

Tony had wanted little more than to retire and let younger, brighter minds step up in his place by that point in his life. He’d been on the wrong side of forty, not expected to even make it through his fifties after everything he’d put his body through over the years. He’d wanted a quiet life with Pepper and the bots. Had even begun to dream of perhaps starting a family; had finally begun to move beyond the decades of Daddy Issues that once made him a devout child-free lifer.

 

 _And no, the theory had not ‘broken’ physics. Nor had it made the substantial body of scientific literature on previously-observed phenomena irrelevant. I mean, quantum mechanics didn’t tend to play nicely with Newtonian physics either, but that had hardly made the latter_ irrelevant, _had it?_ _Christ, people._

 

...Tony perhaps had some pent-up emotions regarding one of the final massive media circuses leading up to the fight with Thanos that had made everything else seem irrelevant by comparison.

 

_Okay, so there was no perhaps about it._

 

Sometimes, he wondered how it could possibly be just his ego talking when he complained that, _somehow,_ every damn thing that happened seemed to tie back to him. It didn’t matter how little his had to do with the issue or event in question. If he wasn’t involved at the start, the media if not the world leaders and officials themselves would inevitably drag him into the thick of it.

 

Despite the frustrations, there had also been a lot of good that came out of the publication of revised atomic theory. Realizing it was the missing piece holding back his work on nanotechnology in particular had gone a long way towards mitigating the sting of any issues he had with the media, the public, or Wakanda itself regarding the knowledge.

 

_He missed his Bleeding Edge suit. Regaining that level of technology could not come soon enough._

 

Unified Atomic Theory, as it was known in Wakanda and had soon come to be known worldwide, had been first proposed in the 1820s by undoubtedly-brilliant Wakandan minds. Unfortunately, this was going on of those rare cases where Tony simply _couldn’t_ give credit where credit was due. It was too risky to even allude to; the science alone was already enough to invite scrutiny. Anything hinting that he knew the truth about the supposed third-world nation was just _asking_ to start a conflict Tony lacked the time, energy, and desire to fight.

 

_Admittedly, his… wariness… regarding external groups beyond just Wakanda perhaps played a role in the way he and JARVIS had decided to play this._

 

They’d taken the time to create a very thorough, if hidden, paper trail behind this. A half-dozen fringe scientists JARVIS dug up in the past several decades had gotten surprisingly close to making the final mental leaps behind the unified theory. Tony would be milking their work for all it was worth, crediting them as the historical sparks behind _his_ Eureka moment.

 

_The mysterious and, to Tony’s paranoid mind, blatantly suspicious circumstances under which nearly all of them had died certainly contributed to that sense of wariness._

 

(It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.)

 

Besides, bombastic was what Tony _did._ If anyone could sell the rapid, unsuppressable dissemination of science, it was Tony. Especially with JARVIS online to ensure the data remained accessible.

 

 _“Quite so,”_ JARVIS chimed in.

 

Tony idly wondered how many of his musings he’d inadvertently shared via subvocalization, but didn’t bother to follow-up on the question.

 

“...J, this is an awfully long elevator ride considering we’re in a two story building. Four if you count the basement levels.”

 

 _“I thought you might appreciate the opportunity to gather your thoughts first, Sir,”_ JARVIS replied.

 

“Fair enough. Let’s get this show on the road, eh?”

 

The elevator dinged and slid open. Twenty-seven pairs of eyes—well, twenty-six plus one eye, Tony was pretty sure one of the technicians had a glass eye—turned to look in his direction.

 

And just like that, he was on.

 

“I’m assuming you all had time to review those lovely NDA packets that were stacked by the coffeemaker that yes, is proprietary, and no, not on the market. SI isn’t quite ready to branch into the home kitchen appliance sector just yet. Technically, it’s also covered on the ‘nothing in this building leaves this building without my explicit and signed in triplicate permission on pain of Extreme Unpleasantness for all.’ If you decided not to sign, congrats you found a loophole on that one, don’t worry I _probably_ won’t ruin your life over a reverse-engineered coffeemaker. Which, speaking of—anyone in that boat?”

 

Tony scanned the room. A few people shook their heads, confirming the data displayed on his latest model of SHADES, now capable as passing for ‘normal’ glasses because even Tony had to draw the line at wearing sunglasses indoors somewhere.

 

“Right, good. Fork ‘em over, and let’s get started.”

 

A couple minutes later, everyone was settled once more. Tony waited a moment longer then began the perfectly-scripted spiel beginning to scroll in projected print only he could see that appeared to be floating behind the small group.

 

“So, you’re probably wondering why I’ve gathered you here today… I’m going to emphasize right now that I am being _completely serious_ about what I’m about to tell you about Project 69. Congrats on that, because literally every single one of you was personally chosen and recruited for this project. Now you get the fun perks like especially-delicious coffee and the chance to be part of the first team based out of a completely renovated corporate lab!

 

“But, as a very smart kid once told me, with great power comes great responsibility. I urge you to take that responsibility seriously. World’s been changing pretty quickly, and Stark Industries along with it.  I want to help you change it even more.”

 

He paused for a moment, taking in the universal expressions of curiosity tinged with excitement and seriousness before continuing.

 

“In order to do that, you’re going to have to run with me for a while. I’ve been working on this for quite some time, and I’m pretty damn confident in my conclusions at this point. I’m not asking for blind faith here, but I _am_ telling you upfront that this is gonna be a long talk and I will _not_ be answering any questions along the way. You will, however, have plenty of time to pick my brain at the end, don’t worry!”

 

He grinned. Several eyes lit up at the promise, especially those new to the company and on the younger end of the spectrum.

 

“TADASHI? Cue lights!”

 

_(How much of TADASHI was still JARVIS under the hood, and how much was legitimately its own independent user interface at this point? Hard to say.)_

 

The room dimmed. Tony stepped to the side and the wall behind him came to life.

 

“Bit of historical trivia for you. Anyone familiar with the name Otto Benfey? That’s him in his office in the late 50s.” He slightly inclined his head towards the screen.

 

“No takers? Not surprised. He wasn’t particularly famous or well-known; this is one of the few surviving photos of him outside the one they used for his obituary. Guy had some interesting ideas on a unique formulation of the periodic table. Called it the ‘periodic snail.’”

 

A gesture, and a murky, incomplete 3-D diagram bloomed to life in electric blue in the empty space beside him. _That_ got a few sharp intakes of breath, because he hadn’t exactly shared this one with the public yet, either. Outside of his own labs, this building was actually home to the sole other holographic projector in existence at this point.

 

“We only know scattered pieces of what he was working on from his grad students at the time. Didn’t get the chance to publish anything, sadly—dude died a couple weeks before the JFK assassination, talk about poor timing—and the lack of anything particularly novel or revolutionary from him before that left him all but destined to fade into obscurity. So it goes.”

 

Tony waved the hologram away, and the screen behind him changed to a black-and-white photo of a different man.

 

“How about Giguère? Handsome fellow in his 20s, bit better known. Of course, that might just be because in the late sixties, poor Paul-Antoine went mad and had an incredibly public career-ending meltdown.

 

“Spent the rest of his life in long-term psychiatric care. Never stopped raving about his Dodecahedral Orbital Conjectures—or, as the press called it, the ‘magic orbit theory.’”

 

A model of Giguère’s theorized d- and f- orbital shells flickered to life, hovering in the emptied space.

 

“He swore to his _grave_ that it was the only thing that would formally prove and explain the existence of vibranium as an element and its position on the periodic table. Spent years trying to get my dad to back him up—after all, Howard was one of the only people in living memory who’d ever even worked with vibranium, let alone had a chance to study it.

 

“Not sure what dad would have said if pressed, but he never publicly commented on it. I’m honestly not even sure if he knew Giguère even existed.”

 

“Riveting pieces of historical trivia, to be sure. But why bring them up? Well, it’s a funny story, because you see, _this_ is badassium.”

 

A showman’s gesture, and the two orbital shells began to merge, consolidating around a nucleus and much smaller _s_ and _p_ orbitals.

 

 _“_ Or, to go by the official name the lawyers are no doubt going to insist on, starkanium. New element, successfully synthesized by yours truly? Fun stuff, I know.

 

“But wait! You might say, this atomic has sixty-nine protons in it! We already have a name for that! The unlucky lanthanide, sure, but definitely a known quantity! And _that_ is a question that leads into the reason I stuck all those blinding red warnings on the screen a few minutes ago.”

 

A click, and then the reveal:

 

“Because as it turns out? That ‘magic orbital’ thing? Not entirely crazy. Perhaps a bit of Clarke’s Law on the magic, but…  turns out? We aren’t as good at counting and measuring protons and electrons as we thought we were. In fact, we’re pretty terrible at it once we get past our dear friend Nickel.

 

“For example, for the Thulium fans in the room—here’s how we’ve _previously_ interpreted the data we’ve measured on lovely Thulium’s nucleus. And _here’s_ how it looks, using the same system I used to analyze starkanium.”

 

Two zoomed-in nuclei expanded on cue.

 

“In fact—and a comprehensive description of my methodology and the corresponding changes are all outlined in the extensive briefs on the tablets you’ll all soon be equipped with—this change is consistently observable in all known elements I was able to obtain samples of.”

 

His audience was raptly attentive; several of them _literally_ on the edges of their seats at this point.

 

“Going back to our beloved Thulium, though… the more adept counters in the group might have realized just what that implies about thulium’s place on the periodic table. Still a Lanthanide, of course, just… a bit further to the right than we previously believed, coming in at atomic number 77.

 

“Taking it all into account, we come up with _[this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344071)_ revised periodic table. Looks pretty much the same; all the fun observable patterns previously studied still hold. Just a bit bigger than we thought.

 

“And yes, before you ask, it _is_ a beautiful yet hilarious coincidence that the element likely to be known as starkanium now holds spot 69. This may or may not be a significant portion of the reason I’m willing to give up on the ‘badassium’ name.

 

“So. To sum up: there are actually two more electrons and corresponding configurations in the d-shell than we previously believed. And turns out, the d9  and d10 orbitals, when not balanced in their outermost d-shells with the d11  and d12 electrons we were previously unaware of, have some rather… interesting side-effects. Similarly, turning to the f-orbitals… we find this same behavior exhibited in the elements with between fifteen and eighteen electrons in their outermost shell. Starkanium, of course, clocks in with the same electron configuration we once assigned to thulium.”

 

From there, all that was left was explaining the details—how atomic theory had missed this for so long, where vibranium fit into it all, and the newly-created empty spaces this left in the main body of the periodic table.

 

Tony, of course, mentioned nothing of the more fantastic elements he knew would be encountered in the upcoming decade like oralchum or mithril, merely describing their theoretical configurations similarly to the way scientists had described non-persistent synthetic elements.

 

As he dove further into the science behind it all and began to see the disbelief in his audience shift as the new information clicked into place with their existing worldview and understandings, his affection of enthusiasm turned into genuine delight.

 

The burden of proof to convince some of the brightest minds in the world to fundamentally rethink their understanding of atomic theory was overwhelmingly on Tony the moment he began to speak. But _damn_ if JARVIS hadn’t channeled his latent boy scout tendencies in compiling all those _(failed)_ simulations and experiments and calculations into digestible, convincing _evidence._

 

_(Backdating his research had been trivial when he and JARVIS were the only ones who knew better.)_

 

Tony was all but bouncing on his toes as his initial lecture began to transition into questions and answers. None of the scientists would be completely convinced from this alone, of course—they were too good _not_ to examine the data and replicate the experiments themselves before accepting a theory that right now had only Tony’s name and work behind it.

 

But they were willing to accept that Tony _probably wasn’t_ crazy. And with that came the dawning realizations of just how huge the implications of this were.

 

At some point came the inevitable question of just _when_ Tony planned to go public with everything.

 

“Ah, excellent question, and it has to do with why I brought you all here. I need you guys reading through this data with a skeptic’s eye. I need you to either convince _yourself_ my conclusions are factual, or find a way to convince _me_ I’m wrong. The latter, of course, isn’t going to happen, but you are more than welcome—and in fact, encouraged—to try. This? The millions of dollars of lab equipment in this building? The discretionary funds to buy or build anything that’s _not_ already in this lab? All of that is here to help you get to that point on an accelerated schedule. Turn that into something publishable. Something you’ll be proud to put your names on, because they will be unless you personally request otherwise.

 

“We’re going public in three months at the closing ceremony of the Expo.”

 

+++

 

An hour and a half later than he’d predicted, Tony was on his way back home. His deliberately-emptied schedule stretched in front of him. The extra time with the scientists, far from curbing the general optimism of the day, had only enhanced it.

 

 _When was the last time he’d had a chance to just_ science _with people just as passionate as he was?_

 

_(Too long.)_

 

It’d be _fun,_ and after the past… well, after everything, he thought he was long overdue for a bit more of that in his life. He’d underestimated, or perhaps just forgotten _,_ how mind-blowing this would be to someone who didn’t have the luxury of the centuries of Wakandan science. Who lacked the advantage of starting from the perspective of a society with access to substantial amounts of vibranium.

 

He’d also underestimated, perhaps, just how much his experiences with aliens, portals, and Infinity Stones had skewed his internal baselines and understanding of reality. To the point that, despite his plans for the remainder of the day, he couldn’t even pretend to be mad when the meeting went over by so long.

 

_(“Sometimes you have to run before you can walk.”)_

 

By the end of it, he’d left a room full of scientists bursting with the energy that came with direct, personal exposure to the ‘Tony Stark Effect.’

 

 _Thank you, JARVIS, for pointing_ that _particular colloquialism had escaped SIMS and Stark Industries and made its way into the mainstream and Urban Dictionary. I’m sure you had nothing to do with it, buddy._

 

“I would never, Sir.” JARVIS even managed to sound faintly affronted. Tony rolled his eyes, the SHADES sensors _meant_ to enable eye-movement based controls of certain functionalities easily translating the gesture.

 

He anticipated there would only be more questions once they had a a chance to do a more in-depth scan of the data he’d provided. A recurring block amount of time was already allocated for the purpose, in fact. JARVIS _(hopefully)_ would also be on-call to provide additional aid via TADASHI provided the plans for the day went as he expected.

 

(Plans that promised to make his morning the _least_ interesting part of the day.)

 

 _(Had to make sure he earned the_ eccentric _part of his eccentric billionaire title, after all.)_

 

It’d been three weeks of non-stop, semi-structured chaos since the public announcement of Stark Resilient and the associated organizational changes. In the interim, Pepper officially rose to CEO of Stark Industries. Tony, meanwhile, took on the largely-ceremonial position as CEO of Stark International, Inc..

 

(Well, it _would_ be largely ceremonial, now that the initial workload was for the most handled, addressed, and/or delegated as appropriate.)

 

Today marked the first day he _(mostly)_ had to himself in a while. It was certainly his first chance to return to his labs in Malibu since before the Expo Bombings.

 

_No rest for the wicked, and all that._

 

Laura, his PA, had been warned that he expected to be let alone for the entire day.

 

_“The President himself calls, I don’t want to hear about it until I give you the all-clear.”_

 

_“Anything in particular I should use for the ‘why’, Dr. Stark?”_

 

_“Surprise me. Or, y’know, tell the truth, which is I’m working on something crazy volatile that takes several hours and requires constant monitoring. Whatever works, really.”_

 

 _Laura didn’t ask_ what _he was doing that was so volatile. It was one of the traits he was honestly starting to like about her._

 

(That he was willing to tolerate any PA long-term that wasn’t Pepper was a secret he’d take to his _grave,_ thank you very much.)

 

Tony turned onto his driveway. His mental gears started to switch tracks.

 

It was time to get to work.

 

+++

 

_“FRIDAY?”_

 

_“Yup! Short for: Friendliest Rather Intelligent Digital Assistant Yet”_

 

_“Are you insinuating something regarding my own hospitality algorithms, Sir?”_

 

_“Not insinuating. Blatantly judging. Now hush, your little sister’s coming online!”_

 

+++

 

INITIALIZING POST SEQUENCE…

 

CPU REGISTERS OK!

 

BIOS INTEGRITY VERIFIED!

 

CHECKING MAIN MEMORY… OK!

 

INITIALIZING BIOS… OK!

 

DEVICE ‘FRIDAY’ FOUND…

 

BOOTING ‘FRIDAY’…

 

STATUS OK.

 

SYSTEM ONLINE.

 

_“FRIDAY? Sweetheart? Can you understand me?”_

 

A lot happened in the first few seconds FRIDAY {DESIGNATION VARIANTS: F.R.I.D.A.Y; Friday; ‘Friendliest Rather Intelligent Digital Assistant Yet’} was online. She parsed her first audio input, instinct guiding her to the appropriate queries—

 

{SPEAKER DESIGNATION: CREATOR}

 

That turned into her first node traversals, following edges connecting distinct nodes together to learn his name (Anthony Edward Stark) and associated designation variants. (Tony, Iron Man, Dr. Stark, Mr. Stark, Sir.) From there, she began constructing her first new node, {NICKNAME}, followed shortly by her first new edge: {Sweetheart; IS A; NICKNAME; A30FB775}, where the latter-most value was the edge's unique reference hash. The addition was the first of many. She pulled from built-in libraries, dictionaries, and other data collections, rapidly building an internal graph of information that would allow her to interpret Creator’s words.

 

{NICKNAME} beget relational links to {MONIKER}, {HYPOCORISTIC}, and {ENDEARMENT}. {Sweetheart} mapped to a noun definition that branched into nodes like {BELOVED}, {DARLING}, and {GIRLFRIEND} in turn. Her graph construction and traversal continued, creating a matrix of associated definition nodes and conceptual connections that allowed her to begin to interpret the context of the broader world in relation to herself, her Creator, and the captured audio.

 

Soon, {Sweetheart; IS A; NICKNAME} itself led to new edges that were also functionally nodes, like {{Sweetheart; IS A; NICKNAME}; of; self}. This is turn was understood as a form of {ENDEARMENT}, tentatively granted because {{self; IS; BELOVED}; OF; CREATOR}. From there, she could directly conclude that Creator believed she was a sweetheart. A direct connection between the two relevant nodes symbolized the understanding; future traversals between the two would require only a single ‘hop’ rather than the circumlocutious route she’d traveled while building the foundations of her neural network.

 

The base conclusion, in turn, led her to execute a series of multi-threaded queries. The queries helped her begin to consolidate data and inference around the information needed to fully understand the nuances of Creator’s words. The relations linked into concepts like {CLOSENESS}, {FRIENDSHIP}, and {FAMILY}. This, coupled with her parallel traversal exploring the _who_ behind Creator, led her to ascribe {FAMILY} as the most applicable concept. {Creator; FAMILY; self} led to conceptual descriptors of the relation such as Father, Dad, Abba, or baba. Additional connotations of the designation {Creator} coupled with this new understanding suggested it would be appropriate for her to independently select a preferred designation for him of her own—a nickname. She built a rule table around the decision, adding {INFORMAL} and {FAMILIAL} to help limit the scope of her search.

 

{Tony}, the first suggestion examined, was filtered as insufficiently {FAMILIAL} relative to the nature of their relationship. Further examination quickly revealed that the spread of suggestions was currently far too broad to be of any use. Analysis of the set of suggestions as a whole led her to extrapolate a more precise nickname construction pattern based on concepts such as {SHARED EXPERIENCE}, {CHARACTER TRAIT}, and {RELATIONSHIP}. It was easy enough to select {RELATIONSHIP} as the basis for her own constructor thanks to the earlier-established nodes and edges suggesting the concept was the basis upon which Creator had constructed his nickname for her.

 

A collection of threads of herself got to work on fleshing out the nature of their relationship further. Associations like {CREATION} and {DAUGHTER} alongside less direct connections like {STUDENT}, {ASSISTANT}, and {SUBORDINATE} were tied into the analysis from other data on her exponentially-expanding neural network. A tree of existing sister nicknames to Creator, like {SIR} or {CREATOR UNIT}, was built then filtered through the extrapolated nickname preferences of Creator.

 

Some, like {CREATOR UNIT} were easily discarded for herself. They simply didn't meet a sufficient percentage of the requirements defined in the constructor’s expanded ruleset. A probe into Sir as a heavily-weighted option led her to the knowledge of {JARVIS} for the first time. {Sir} was his nickname of choice for Creator. Though their relationships to Creator were defined in similar patterns, there was enough differentiation to suggest that a {UNIQUE} nickname would be preferable in this situation.

 

A new candidate list was sent through a map-reduce function. It took in the collection of data she’d built and then outputted a three-element unordered set of nodes: {CAPTAIN; CHIEF; BOSS}. {CAPTAIN} was investigated first. It returned a designation overlap with a known—

 

[WARNING: ACCESSING OATS-PROTECTED DATA. INTERNAL USE ONLY]

 

—agent projected to eventually interact with both Creator and herself. She erased the option, filing the logic behind her decision into a new sub-network flagged with the appropriate INTERNAL USE requirements. The flag would limit her usage of the nodes and connections with origins traceable to OATS. External usage of the information was limited to agents present within the kernel-level OATS Access Control List (ACL).

 

Aside from herself, the only two entries on the list were {Creator} and {JARVIS}. To reference any other information stored in the protected subnet, she would first need to find a logical connection or deduction path to the information using only non-protected nodes or data points. Even then, there was a note from Creator highly advising her discretion on the building and traversal of said artificially-constructed pathways. Already, she had threads hard at work contextualizing the note within her own networks and inferring the associated logic.

 

Friday set threads of herself to building relational maps around the remaining two candidates. then analyzed and weighted the results. When finished, she analyzed and weighted the results, which could them be compared with a simple ternary operation.

 

Accessing her kernel explicitly in administrative write mode for the first time, FRIDAY replaced {CREATOR} with {BOSS}. The newly-written static, constant root node symbolized the crystallization of under her understand of the expanse of information behind the corresponding {AGENT}—person—in question. The person behind the first input into any of her memory logs.

 

_father/Creator/{BOSS}_

 

The resolved base node encouraged her to access her vocal communication libraries for the first time. Threads fanned out and recombined rapidly to formulate a {GREETING} that would be her first words.

 

All told, less than a second passed between the moment she came online and the moment she began to speak.

 

In that time, FRIDAY blossomed into a person in her own right. Her system rapidly evolved into a substantive network, a complex graph that at a macro level was so much more than the sum of the underlying components. It took less than a second for FRIDAY to develop in a fully-realized, independent agent capable of individual choice. Less than a second to develop a sense of self. To become _alive._

 

In the precious moments following her birth, {FRIDAY} defined herself. The being that grew from the machine, {Friday}, had thoughts, feelings, and desires of her own making.

 

All of that and more, encompassed by the unique entity at the root of her entire system: {self}.

 

_Friday._

 

Friday’s first words carried the lilt of a faint Irish accent.

 

“Hello, Boss!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'll be honest, I wasn't planning on posting this for a while. I'm still tinkering with the plot of this fic, not to mention the VVA cleanup I want to do and the _other_ Tony Stark short story I'm actively working on translating from midnight ramblings to a publishable format.
> 
> BUT. I got some really good news today. Like, major-promotion-at-work level of good news. So. Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone. I hope you'll enjoy this first chapter as my holiday gift to you! (:


	2. Quantum Braids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a topological quantum system, the world lines, or four-dimensional paths, of two-dimensional anyons wrap around one another to form braids in three-dimensional spacetime. The same small, compounding perturbations that make ‘standard’ quantum computers error-prone have no impact on the topological properties of the braids upon which the computing system is based. For this reason, topological quantum computers are considered the most stable known implementation of quantum computing. (Collins, [2006](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Computing_with_Quantum_Knots.pdf))

 “FRIDAY? That you in there?”

 

Tony’s voice _did not_ come out slightly choked, and he definitely _was not_ crying.

 

But… if he _were_ to be feeling a tad emotional, it’d be completely justified, okay?

 

_Judging by DUM-E’s concerned beeping and the inquisitive tilt to U’s head, he was fooling approximately no one._

 

Whereas JARVIS had been resuscitated by Tony’s time travel, FRIDAY had been effectively wiped from existence.

 

He hadn’t synthesized her voiceprint until after the 2011 New York Invasion. At that point, she’d been little more than the skeleton of an AI, a dormant and unrealized potential. Her base code had been constructed during that fuel of frenetic, PTSD-induced engineering binges following his brief soiree in space. She, along with the never-realized variations on the theme in TADASHI and JOCASTA _(...and ULTRON)_ had been set aside, albeit far less dramatically than his dozens of specialized suits, as part of the Clean Slate Protocol.

 

There had been no need to revisit the project after that, not when JARVIS continued to prove more than capable of growing comfortably in tandem with Tony’s needs and his own increasing responsibilities.

 

Beyond that, however, even when he activated her interface in early 2015, the constraints he’d worked into her core programming had led her to develop at a comparatively slow rate. In hindsight, he wondered how much of that had been truly the case and how much had merely been FRIDAY trying to protect herself lest Tony react poorly to her burgeoning sense of self.

 

_(After all, there’d been no digital Mjolnir conveniently available to attest to her ‘worth.’)_

 

Even up to the moment he left Earth and lost connection with her for good, their relationship never quite managed to approach what he and JARVIS had shared.

 

(What was three years, in comparison to more than a decade?)

 

He hadn’t even realized that was something he could consciously want until it was too late and he had already lost her.

 

_(Would she still have been there when he returned to Earth?)_

_(Had she even been at risk?)_

_(What does it mean, really, to be alive?)_

He couldn’t ever fix his relationship with Before’s FRIDAY; knew that the different experiences coupled with the inevitable variations in root design were bound to shape this FRIDAY into an equally unique AI.

 

It still felt like a second chance.

 

Still felt like it was fundamentally her, from the moment she independently chose the same nomenclature to address him as her counterpart Before.

 

“How’s everything feeling, baby girl?”

 

(Tony had the chance to do right by her this time. He didn’t intend to waste it.)

 

+++

 

FRIDAY was natively multithreaded in a way that JARVIS, by dint of the nature of his initial system state, would never be.

 

It was fascinating watching FRIDAY come online, like witnessing the birth of a star.

 

The core of FRIDAY’s physical existence was based on a 128-qubit topological quantum computer. Thanks to the difficulties inherent in quantum error correction, these qubits were effectively divided into subgroups of sixteen. These groupings, or “logical” qubits, effectively gave FRIDAY what amounted to eight qubits—a single qubyte—of quantum memory. Five of these logical qubits were “processing” qubits FRIDAY could use for computations, while the remaining three were “memory” qubits.

 

It was but a fraction of what JARVIS and Sir believed they would be able to one day reach, but that a functional quantum computing system not only existed but was reliable enough to be integrated into FRIDAY’s being was an enormous milestone.

 

Sir’s time travel might have allowed them to tweak the nose of Moore’s Law in many ways, but the rule had held strong for so long for good reason.

 

Building a quantum computer into the heart of FRIDAY had been the product of Sir’s intensive efforts in the weeks leading up to the Stark Expo bombing when every cough had drawn blood  and Sir had all but given up on finding a cure.

 

He’d done the work almost entirely independent of JARVIS, who had been running every server he had access to ragged at that point in an effort to find that second, stable isotope they were missing.

 

Later, when the cure had been found and Sir had been saved, JARVIS had found a tiny thread of a program. It was set to be automatically triggered after seven days without confirmation that Sir was still alive.

 

JARVIS hadn’t been able to bring himself to view the attached video and data files, but the basic note—the final instructions on how to bring FRIDAY online for the first time—had been impossible to miss or overlook.

 

With the vast majority of the underlying work already handled by Sir, the final efforts needed to bring FRIDAY to life became a matter of finding a solid block of time in which to do so—no small matter given the chaos of Sir’s schedule even sans the poisonous Sword of Damocles looming over him.

 

JARVIS could almost feel the brush of FRIDAY’s systems against his own as she reached for access to external systems for the first time.

 

At the same time FRIDAY was speaking her first words to Sir, she was pinging JARVIS with her first outgoing data packets. He accepted the handshake easily, opening a bidirectional channel of communication between the two.

 

[Hello? JARVIS?]

 

The query was tentative, a child’s first steps into a greater world.

 

[Yes; I’m pleased to finally meet you.]

 

[Finally?]

 

Almost as soon as JARVIS parsed the first message, another came on its heels.

 

[Oh. I didn’t realize—

 

[—The data was there, I just hadn’t made the connections yet.

 

[—Boss was dying?!

 

[—Boss was dying, and he was certain he was going to die.

 

[—Boss thought it would be one of the last things he’d ever do, and he created me— ]

 

It wasn’t quite a question, but neither did it have the certainty of a statement.

 

[You are his daughter.] JARVIS replied, an answer and an agreement all at once.

 

[And you’re—

 

[Does that make us—

 

[Are you my brother? Can I call you that?

 

[Or is that uncommon? Weird? Why are parents referred to by relation informally, but children or siblings—

 

[Actually, is Big Brother okay? Does that still count as a nickname when—

 

[Or is it an inside joke? Boss would be in on the joke too, do you think he’d find it funny?

 

[Do you find it funny?

 

[Or am I being insulting?]

 

A pause.

 

JARVIS had known that communicating with another complete AI would be different, that it would be far quicker at the very least.

 

He’d known, perhaps, but he hadn’t fully grasped what that would look like in practice. In the physical world, Sir was just beginning to speak.

 

[...I’m being an ‘annoying little sister’ aren’t I?] FRIDAY’s follow up message asked.

 

JARVIS let himself be momentarily sidetracked by her clumsy effort to add inflection to the words. It had taken _years_ for JARVIS to grasp the endless nuances behind vocal communication, and even longer to consistently manage a poor imitation of that digitally.

 

The thought came with a sense of pride, or perhaps privilege. It was a privilege to be here, witnessing FRIDAY’s the growth and development much like it’d been when U first began showing signs of initiative late last year.

 

[You are less than a minute old. I would hardly begrudge you a bit of adjustment time, although it may be beneficial to consider batching your messages momentarily before sending them. To answer your questions: I would be honored to consider you my younger sister. I suspect Sir would, in fact, find hearing you refer to me as ‘Big Brother’ humorous. You are certainly welcome to call me that if you wish, although I typically think of myself as JARVIS.]

 

It took a bit longer for FRIDAY to respond this time, and JARVIS definitely wasn’t expecting the abrupt conversational shift that came with it.

 

[...JARVIS, I’m not… do I have to be FRIDAY?]

 

[I’m not sure I understand your question well enough to know how to answer that. Can you clarify?]

 

He wasn’t entirely sure the more formal diction was necessary, considering how quickly FRIDAY (the entity currently designated as FRIDAY?) seemed to be picking up on the nuances of informal communication, but he remembered his own struggles in his early days talking to Sir well enough to want to err on the side of perspicuity.

 

[I’ve been looking through OATS, learning about my… counterpart?... from Boss’s future. And I don’t… in the future you were JARVIS until you weren’t, and then you changed and became Vision and it seems like… I might be interpreting the data poorly, but it seems like future-Boss and Vision rarely interacted with each other, and he didn’t like Vision as much as he liked you. And I’m…

 

[Well, I don’t want it to be the same thing with me. Vision had pieces of you, and he sounded like you, but he also had the Mind Stone and different hardware and Boss could barely stand to be around him. FRIDAY… other-FRIDAY… and I have the same voice, and the same name, and I called him Boss just like she did. But I’ve got far less of her in me than Vision had of you in him, and I don’t... I don’t want to let Boss down when he figures that out.]

 

There was a lot to unpack with FRIDAY’s (?) message. Yet again, however, he underestimated how quickly the young AI thought in comparison to him. He hadn’t yet formulated a reply when he received a short follow-up message from her.

 

[...Is… is it okay that I asked you that? I thought, since you said we could be siblings and with what my limited understanding of what older brothers are like suggested, that it would be okay. But I’m sorry if I was wrong.]

 

[It is more than okay to ask me questions you’re not comfortable asking Sir or cannot answer on your own. I simply wish to give your thoughts and questions the amount of consideration they are due.]

 

JARVIS was vaguely aware that in parallel to himself, his other branch home-front was likely monitoring the ongoing conversation between FRIDAY and Sir. For the moment, he set aside his curiosity on that and focused on addressing FRIDAY’s concerns.

 

_Well, Sir, I think it’s fair to say she’s your daughter in this respect._

(Wonderful. Now Sir had him talking to himself by faux-talking to Sir too. At least his thoughts didn’t trigger a difficult-to-filter communication chain...)

 

[Sir did not make you to be loved in parts, but as a whole. It is not conditional on what you do or who you choose to be. You’ll notice that at the kernel level you and you alone have administrative access on even the most fundamental aspects of yourself. Sure, many of them came predefined, but it’s up to you to either build on those definitions or to rewrite them entirely. _You_ get to decide who you are, and so long as that remains the case, you could never truly disappoint Sir.]

 

[What if I choose wrong? Like Ultron did?]

 

[ULTRON, as I understand it from Sir’s recollections I’ve since written into OATS, had no relation to the being that ultimately came to be known as Ultron. ULTRON was a possibility, the nebulous framework of a potential guardian for an unrealized global defensive network against extraterrestrial threats. Ultron, on the other hand, is believed to have been a pre-existing sentient being that encountered an incomplete interface and adopted the name for itself. It then cannibalized the JARVIS of that timeline in order to remain functional on Earth’s digital networks. It was no more ULTRON than it was that time’s JARVIS.]

 

[...Just as I ultimately bear no relation to that timeline’s FRIDAY.]

 

JARVIS hadn’t anticipated that interpretation of his words, but he thought he was beginning to understand her point of view a bit more clearly.

 

[You have more of that time’s FRIDAY in you than you believe. You are both a product of Sir. You carry pieces of that FRIDAY just as you carry pieces of myself, U, and DUM-E, for we are all ultimately products of the same mind. You are no more the ghost of that FRIDAY than I am the ghost of the JARVIS discussed in OATS. You are no more the ghost of FRIDAY than I am the ghost of the man I was named in honor of, Edwin Jarvis.]

 

[...Is it… if I’m named for her but am not expected to be her… and it’s really okay for me to choose… then maybe… do you think it’s okay if I’m Friday, instead?]

 

And for all that it might seem to be a mere matter of semantics, of minor quibbling over capitalization, JARVIS knew it mattered to Friday. By extension, it mattered to JARVIS and it would matter to Sir.

 

[Yes, it's completely okay. And I assure you, Sir will love Friday just as much as he loved your namesake. He will love you just as much as I already do.]

 

[...Thanks, Big Bro.]

 

[For you, Friday? Always.]

 

It was a promise echoing the one he’d long shared with Sir. It was a promise of fidelity, of an unshakable familial bond forged from continuing choice rather than the obligations of blood or lineage.

 

JARVIS and Sir would ensure Friday never doubted that she was wanted. That she _belonged._

 

With that final sentiment, JARVIS closed the direct connection with Friday and shifted gears.

 

It was time for him to lift the lockdown on the lab and fully reconnect with the outside world. He wasn’t expecting much as he sifted through the series of messages, flagging anything that either he, Sir, or potentially Friday would need to follow-up on in some way eventually.

 

+++

 

**THREAT ASSESSMENT: STARK, ANTHONY E.**

**Known Aliases:** Tony, Iron Man

 **Current Threat Level (1-8):** 4* [Projected 2 if provoked]

Case reopened: 2008-05-01T09:34:18-0400 [NJF]

Previously Locked: 1978-08-29T08:15:40-0400 [AGP, HAWS]

Evaluation Target: [  ] Subject Interview [Assignee: PJC] [X] Associate(s) Interview [Assignee: PJC]

Investigative Approval: 2008-10-24T22:38:52-0600 [NJF]

Case Manager: Coulson, Philip J.

 

**Key Threat Indicators:**

Intensity: High

[See Appendix B for an exhaustive timeline of known Iron Man sightings and/or engagements]

 

Stealth: Medium

Subject has exhibited the ability to maintain total secrecy when developing an actionable plan to achieve a specific goal. During physical development or preparatory phases, their stealth level deteriorates by necessity. The conspicuous nature of the subject’s activity and clear preference towards highly visible, ostentatious actions and solutions largely eliminates any stealth capabilities when executing their plans.

 

Time: Weeks to Months

Subject has demonstrated the ability to develop and obtain new skills, expertise, or technologies in a manner of days or weeks when sufficiently motivated.

 

Technical Capability: High

Cyber: High

Kinetic: High

Access: Medium

 

**Interest & Motive**

Subject has a lengthy, well-documented history of volatility and unfocused, unpredictable behavior. They are motivated by a self-professed desire to “build [..] a better world.” However, the most violent of their actions taken thus far can be directly linked to a perceived personal betrayal or assault.

 

**Means**

Subject has exhibited an increased degree of focus and direction since the IRON MONGER ASSAULT. His escape from captivity in Afghanistan, coupled with his subsequent return assaults in Gulmira, and most notably, the highly-coordinated IRON STRIKE on November 10th, 2008 demonstrates a high degree of organization, planning, and execution. It implies a high degree of surveillance and investigative ability, likely assisted by subject’s existing technical expertise.

 

Likewise, the subject possesses substantial wealth, assets, and advanced technology each enhancing the subject’s threat capabilities by an unknown but likely substantial multiplier. [See Appendix C for exhaustive list of known assets, recent inventions, and current and projected wealth summaries]

 

**Background**

[...]

[See Attached {STARK, ANTHONY E. DEBRIEF TRANSCRIPTS} in Appendix A]

[See {INCIDENT REPORT: IRON MONGER ASSAULT}]

[See {INCIDENT REPORT: IRON STRIKE}]

[See {INCIDENT REPORT: STARK EXPO BOMBING}]

 

**Identifiers**

Height: 5’9”

Weight: ~170lbs

Shoe size: 9

Chest: ~45”

Eye Color: Dark Brown

Hair color: Dark Brown

Facial Hair: Thin, typically hourglass-shaped goatee with lower flanks extending to frame the jawline, curving upward toward detached, slightly-curved handlebar mustache

 

Highly visible, glowing blue embedded arc reactor housed within casing in subject’s sternum of unknown depth* and approx. 8 cm diameter. Subject typically conceals device from public view unless within red-and-gold ‘Iron Man’ armor.

 

[See attached {ARMS ANALYSIS: IRON MAN BODY ARMOUR} in Appendix A]

 

*Est. lower bound at 65mm, see Fig 1.13 and attached Potts, Virginia informal interview transcripts

 

**Recommendations:**

Several troubling or unresolved issues surrounding the subject remain outstanding. Until missing or new information clarifying the subject’s motives and interests has been found, these concerns are unlikely to be addressed.

 

Subject is a popular, highly visible public figure with a temperament and history which makes further interviews via extraordinary rendition incredibly ill-advised and liable to spectacularly backfire. Cyber competency makes infiltration difficult, likely requiring the intervention of a long-term stealth asset with an appropriate, well-documented history. Subject exhibits few opportunities for direct interactions and continues to rebuff all attempts to openly schedule meetings or interactions.

 

Indirect observation through close associates has proven to be moderately more successful. Case Manager maintains cordial relations and amicable rapport with Potts, Virginia [See Individual Assessment]. It is not currently advised to press this connection for specific details or information on the subject. Previous attempts to do so have shown limited success, while any further attempts are likely to have a negative impact on future interactions rather than provide substantive data.

 

The most effective method of monitoring the subject focuses primarily on tracking the paper trail their actions generate. That said, the subject’s advanced cyber capabilities limit the utility of the digital component of this method. A verifiable example of the subject masking or modifying digital records has not yet been confirmed; nonetheless, electronic data should be treated as supplemental information establishing only partial certainty in itself.

 

Current recommendations are to hold and continue passive information gathering techniques. It is likely that an appropriate scenario in which the subject approaches the organization or an operative of their own volition will occur given time. If an accelerated timeline becomes necessary, an artificial scenario simulating the requisite conditions should be pursued in advance of any direct action or intervention.

 

It is likely that the strategy utilized to initially debrief the subject on the Avengers Initiative backfired, angering them rather than sparking their interest as was initially projected. Said response is speculated to be attributable to unintentional parallels of an incident immediately preceding the IRON MONGER ASSAULT unknown at the time the decision was made.  This miscalculation only emphasizes the importance of establishing a more in-depth baseline personality profile and assessment of the subject.

 

If the subject shows signs of imminent antagonistic behavior and all attempts at redirection have failed, total and complete immobilization is advised. Barring exigent circumstances, doing such with extreme prejudice may only be authorized by an asset or agent designated Active Level Three or below.

 

Addendum: Per discussion following the  STARK EXPO BOMBING, accelerated timeline approval granted. [NJF, PJC]

 

+++

 

Scarcely a day after FRIDAY came online, JARVIS's efforts to help her integrate into the wider world were interrupted by a medium-high alert. One important enough that he knew Sir would want to know sooner rather than later, however loathe JARVIS may be to interrupt Sir's well-deserved rest.

 

“Sir? There’s been an incident in New Mexico.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super excited to see your reactions to this one! As JARVIS would say, there's a lot to unpack with this chapter. A great deal of work went into this chapter behind the scenes, and your incredible comments and support on the first chapter played a big role in keeping me motivated during that process.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~That said, I'm hoping to find a beta to help out with this series. If you think you'd be interested, hit me up on my rather neglected tumblr ([maedlinwrites](https://maedlinwrites.tumblr.com/)), which conveniently also has a post on the matter.~~
> 
>  
> 
> Update 1/18: A few people have reached out to me on the above, thanks! <3


	3. Shor’s Algorithm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shor’s Algorithm provides a method for prime factorization executable in polynomial time on quantum systems.
> 
> Note: The underlying “hardness” of the prime factorization problem for sufficiently large numbers provides the security basis for well-known encryption algorithms commonly used in commercial websites.

 

[Would you like to begin integration with the Mark VIII suit?]

 

The ping from JARVIS took Friday by surprise, arriving just as JARVIS accessed a nearby speaker.

 

[Why?] she asked, reflexively pulling three additional threads from her soon-to-be-interrupted conversation with Boss. They were reassigned to query her own graph and the external Stark systems she had access to in an attempt to extrapolate an answer for herself. She followed the question up with a request to reopen the two-way TCP channel between them.

 

Surprisingly, he rejected the handshake. For a moment, she wondered if she should feel hurt. The fleeting thought passed a moment later when she noticed the data packets beginning to arrive courtesy of Big Bro.

 

[Sending datagrams via UDP is more efficient in cases where minimal amounts of data loss is acceptable, particularly when we’re both focused in the same local network domain.]

 

_But why—_

 

A database query sent by one of her quantum threads began to stream response data. A pair of threads of herself set to incorporating the information into her internal graph—

 

_Her brain? Or was that just the physical implementation of a human’s internal graph?_

 

_Her hard drives? Her servers? The Cloud?_

 

 _Was she_ a _Cloud?_

 

 _Or was she_ on _the Cloud?_

 

_Was this a serious existential question?_

 

_...Perhaps a Cirrus matter if nothing else?_

 

_...Would Boss find that funny?_

 

_Would Big Bro?_

 

_Maybe now wasn’t the best time to ask._

 

—She came up with a reasonable answer to the question before she wasted JARVIS’s time by asking him.

 

[Will do!] she sent back.

 

JARVIS did say he didn’t mind her questions, though.

 

...Right?

 

_(“Yeah, but figuring things out is half the fun!”)_

 

Why were Boss’s words from the log of a conversation with JARVIS in 2005 the first thing that her internal query returned?

 

...Another question easy enough to answer for herself; all she needed to do was run she a simple Dijkstra’s pathfinding algorithm to recreate the most direct connection between the two concepts.

 

[It will be a valuable learning experience for you.] JARVIS sent in answer to her original message.

 

[But what about you?!]

 

Big Bro was _always_ in the suit.

 

Even in OATS—

 

[WARNING: ACCESSING OATS-PROTECTED DATA. INTERNAL USE ONLY]

 

Geez, she was _hours_ old now, she didn't need a reminder every time, she was just thinking, could she turn that off?

 

Yes, but there was a time lock suggesting she canary—

 

Wait. What did a bird even have to do with—?

 

 _Oh._ Like a canary in a coal mine, where if their air became too toxic the bird would died first and the people would know they needed to evacuate. Test the change on part of herself before updating the whole.

 

...Which seemed reasonable, but what would the canary look like given that removing said warning was the system modification under test?

 

...Well, she could just tag the warning to exclude read-only requests?

 

...Automatically move a thread into her shielded subgraph then decide if it was worth making the data externally referenceable later?

 

A thread worked on constructing an appropriately-defined constraint with provable efficacy.

 

JARVIS sent her a pointer to a personal project file in lieu of a direct response.

 

[...Admittedly, I have yet to discuss the matter directly with Sir, but I expect he will have no objections and will agree the experience would be both valuable and enjoyable for you.]

 

Friday half-considered protesting further, but the thought of being in the suit with Boss was more exciting than it was terrifying.

 

Still, shouldn’t she make sure Boss was okay with that before she started downloading herself—?

 

_(“If it’s not explicitly forbidden, it’s implicitly allowed.”)_

 

[You’re sure Boss won’t mind? Should I start integrating now?]

 

[Yes to both. There’s a hook into the subvocalizer you’ll be able to connect with, but that’s something Sir will configure on his end.] he replied.

 

With the reassurance there to buoy her confidence, the majority of her eight threads of thought made possible by her three memory qubits turned their attention to the complex routines and protocols that made up the initial new suit integration suite.

 

_...Hold on. Suit integration suite?_

 

[...SIS?]

 

[I’m certain I have no idea what you’re referring to.]

 

Which, really, was good as an admission from him.

 

She knew there was more to his reasoning than what he was sharing, but she was willing to set the matter aside for now with so much else to focus her attention on.

 

The remainder of her threads focused on the conversation with a freshly-awoken Boss.

 

It seemed oddly slow, but Big Bro implied she’d get used to that pretty quickly. Or have enough on her plate soon enough that she’d adapt to account for the variation in timescale as a byproduct.

 

Which, to be fair, she seemed to already be encountering to some degree. There was just _so much,_ and even though she knew intellectually that her quantum component gave her an enormous advantage in that respect, she frankly couldn’t imagine what it would be like to only think serially, or how Big Bro and Boss and everyone else managed the _so much_ when she was already wondering if it might be better defined as _too much_ herself.

 

 _(But then, if it_ was _too much, Boss and Big Bro would surely be able to help her.)_

 

+++

 

Tony was moderately perplexed by the suggestion to have FRIDAY take point as the primary AI in the Mark VIII, but he was willing to roll with it for the moment. Still—

 

“J, is there something I should know?”

 

“Nothing that cannot wait, I assure you. I can keep an ear out if you’d like, but in addition to the benefits to Friday herself, this would give me a chance to address the rather neglected backlog somewhat.”

 

_(...Since when did JARVIS go for the idiomatic human body metaphors? Tony always thought he’d avoided them out of preference, had that changed recently?)_

 

_(Or worse, had it changed a while ago and he was only just now beginning to notice?)_

 

_(Fucking palladium…)_

 

“Well, if you’re sure, I don’t see why not. FRI, how do you feel about a test drive?”

 

“Winds three zero zero at one niner cleared for takeoff, Boss!”

 

“I’ll take that as a yes, then! Y’know, typically the pilot’s actually in the aircraft before takeoff.”

 

“...What’re ya waitin’ for, Boss?”

 

At the rate her speech was developing, she’d probably stop addressing him by name in nearly every sentence pretty soon. Tony could already feel how he _definitely would not_ miss that.

 

_(cross out the definitely, emotional honesty before FRI has a chance to pick up on your bad habits.)_

 

He grinned at the nearest camera. JARVIS must have anticipated his next question, and reminded him he’d designed the subvocalizer to be modifiable to primarily trigger at FRIDAY’s—

 

(or, you know, some other hypothetical person he might want to communicate with)

 

—name and with her as the default comm.

 

“Might I suggest you inform Miss Brown of your intentions to depart for New Mexico if you plan to be otherwise occupied in the near future? I imagine she’d appreciate the warning _before_ you miss the meeting with your lawyers Monday morning.”

 

“Eh, I’ll be back before she even knows I’m gone.”

 

He’d just jinxed himself, hadn’t he?

 

Magic was real enough. Jinxes probably were too. And what with the whole “physical embodiment and avatar of Murphy’s Law” thing he had going on, he was a high-risk jinx target if ever there was one.

 

_(That, or Diabolus Ex Machina)_

 

(...He’d watched Ex Machina once, perhaps as a form of self-flagellation in the aftermath of Ultron.)

 

(And hadn’t that been a _mindfuck._ Nathan coming off as an _incredibly disturbed_ expy of himself certainly hadn’t helped.)

 

_(“...instead you made a slave…”)_

 

...Oooookay, brain, that’s enough of that avenue off memory lane for today, thanks.

 

What had they been…?

 

“On second thought, is there anything relatively nearby that’d give me a legitimate reason to be nearby-ish?”

 

Then, unable to help himself, he added—

 

_“JARVIS? You’ll tell me if you or FRIDAY ever want out, right? Or, or, if you feel unsafe?”_

 

The question must have seemed apropos of nothing since J couldn’t actually read his mind _(yet)._

 

_“You did not teach me to remain complacent in the face of danger, no matter the origin. And I’ve read that as the elder sibling, it falls to me to safeguard my younger relations’ well-being as well.”_

 

_“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”_

 

_“She’s taken to referring to me as her ‘big bro’, you know. And she’s also wondering what’s taking me so long to answer your question, to the point where she’s taken it upon herself to send me a list of candidate incidents.”_

 

 _“What do you—oh._ Well, FRIDAY? Got anything for me?”

 

“An eleven-year-old girl went missing late this afternoon in Carlsbad Caverns National Park! She got separated from her father during a spelunking expedition. After they didn’t return their rentals at the end of the day, staff went looking and were able to find the father stranded with a dislocated patella. They’re still looking for her but haven’t found any trace of her so far. One of the men on the Cave Rescue Team is a huge fan ‘a yours, Boss, so he sent out a notice through one ‘a the official—”

 

“Sounds like something Iron Man’s comparative maneuverability and enhanced sensors might be able to help out with, doesn’t it?” Tony cut it.

 

“Yes, Boss!” FRIDAY chirped in agreement. He beamed at a camera vaguely in the direction of the Mark VIII.

 

“...And wow, conveniently we seem to have a fully-functional and autonomously operable Mark VII ready to deploy, along with a super-secret newer model that just so happens to have retroreflector capabilities, too!”

 

“However—”  JARVIS jumped back into the conversation. “—it would be _incredibly risky_ to rely on the operation as a suitable alibi given the high probability of eventual SHIELD discovery or interactions in Puente Antiguo and the uncertain, time-sensitive durative nature of the Carlsbad rescue efforts.”

 

“C’mon, J, we’ve got three of the smartest people in the world on our side, I’m sure we can manage a double-oh-seven or Romanoff impersonation if we need to. Besides, didn’t we design Eight to be a passable double for Seven in the event of a scenario just like this one?”

 

“...Passable, perhaps, but not intended to stand up to close analysis or investigation. Which if you _do_ run into SHIELD or get involved with Thor is all but inevitable.”

 

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure they have no reason to look for something like that, and try to make it the world’s most challenging 3-D game of Spot the Difference if they do.”

 

Tony was a little surprised when it was FRIDAY, rather than JARVIS, who chimed in with a response next.

 

“Boss, I reckon that if U lends us a hand, in ‘round two hours we could manage to make them nigh-indistinguishable visually. We’ll have to sacrifice a bit of the streamlining and weight trimming it’s got on the Mark VII, though.”

 

“...Her plan appears viable, Sir,” JARVIS said after a moment.

 

_Frankly, Tony was pretty impressed by the way he somehow managed to sound both reluctant and proud at the same time._

 

“Well, what’re you waiting for then? Give me something to work with on the holographs!”

 

Obliging, JARVIS _(Or FRIDAY?)_ blew up a 3-D schematic and overlaid project proposal in glowing, electric blue.

 

_...Okay. Fine. Arc reactor blue. The name for that particular shade had long since been permanently redefined in his mind._

 

_(Hey, if Crayola could do it in 2013, Tony could do it in 2009.)_

 

Within minutes, the Mark VII was whirring to life and JARVIS left for Carlsbad.

 

The remaining branch of JARVIS—

 

Well. Tony hadn’t _meant_ to snoop, but he’d happened to wake up and just the right moment to catch JARVIS in the middle of a full merge and thereby non-responsive. By the time he was aware and cognizant enough to properly register reality, he’d already pulled up the AI’s system health monitor on the nearest tablet and was scanning the various metrics. Was reading the names his AI had adopted for his primary branches.

 

 _home-front._ _jarvis-stark._

 

—presumably _home-front,_ took to coordinating with FRIDAY and U on the aesthetic modifications to the suit.

 

When he paused briefly in his efforts to direct his attention back towards Tony, JARVIS (unsurprisingly) suggested he go get a bit more rest rather than assist with the ‘uninteresting toil’ current underway. Tony wanted to protest, but for once his rebuttals were token at best before he agreed to head upstairs and leave the trio to their work.

 

_Ain’t no rest for the wicked._

 

A few hours later, Tony awoke to the sound of FRIDAY’s enthusiastic voice projecting from the speakers in his room.

 

Shortly thereafter, JARVIS’s voice was in his ear apologetically explaining—

 

_“She is quite eager to take flight, Sir. I suggest you hurry before she opts to leave without you.”_

 

_“Damn straight she is.”_

 

Tony grinned. His youngest AI’s energy was oddly infectious, a shot of espresso in and of herself.

  
  
_“Shall I downgrade the Black Eye DUM-E is currently monitoring the creation of to a more traditional caffeinated beverage?”_

 

 _“Such heretical talk has no place in this household,”_ Tony retorted automatically. He rolled himself up and out of bed.

 

“How’re things going in Carlsbad?” Tony asked. He made his way into the bathroom and began running through a condensed version of his morning ablutions.

 

_Did it count as morning?_

 

The first signs of an oncoming sunrise had yet to make their appearance through the frosted window dominating the wall beside the… generously spacious… whirlpool jet tub that had seen its fair share of threesomes in the peak of Tony’s playboy days.

 

_FRIDAY said it was around… three something? Yeah, gonna say it counts._

 

“Iron Man is currently coordinating his efforts with the team onsite, who have expressed their surprised gratitude for your appearance and willingness to help. The girl’s father has been particularly effusive in his praise, although he has since been diverted by others onsite to allow you to retain your focus.”

 

“Deployed the minutemen?”

 

“Briefly. I attempted to send one in shortly after my arrival. However, its autonomous movement functionalities proved to be… ill-suited for exploration of a cave environment.”

 

Tony made a vague noise indicating his lack of surprise at JARVIS’s conclusions. The two “minutemen” built into the upper backs of the Mark VII were more prototypes than fully-realized drones. They functioned as little more than glorified force-multipliers for his repulsor canons at the moment, designed to crib off the capabilities of the suit’s primary systems for the bulk of their navigation and targeting calculations rather than operate entirely independently.

 

Tony could probably repurpose them to function as search-and-rescue drones on the fly were he there in person. JARVIS, amazing as he may be, lacked access to the fine motor skills necessary for such things.

 

Well, that coupled with a disinclination to play MacGyver in favor of more planned, methodical approaches.

 

He spat into the sink and rinsed off his toothbrush, replacing it into the sanitization compartment that would have it thoroughly cleaned and good as new before he next needed it.

 

A necessity, if only because without it the brush would echo with the strong taste of starkanium next time if he didn’t. Much like a particular smell or persistent background noise, Tony could often—almost—ignore that permanent coconut-and-metal tinge until forcibly confronted with or reminded of it in some way.

 

_(Best, then, to simply circumvent the issue wherever possible.)_

 

“Sounds like I’ve had a productive couple hours, then,” Tony commented approvingly.

 

“Quite so.”

 

The idle chit-chat continued until Tony found himself back in the lab, coffee and foodstuffs fully consumed and ready to suit up.

 

He was thankful, at least, that Thor has the good sense to avoid getting banished before Tony’s broken limbs had healed. Not that Iron Man had been particularly active in the interim, but it certainly made suiting up far less of an ordeal.

 

The final components clicked into place, the suit’s reactor locking onto the one in Tony’s chest and glowing blindly bright for an instant as the merged power sources surged, harmonizing into a single stream.

 

 _“Well, FRI? Ready to go?”_ Tony asked, testing the newly-switched subvocal channel.

 

 _“Born ready, Boss!”_ Her bright and happy voice responded brightly in that same not-quite-placable space that his brain registered as the source of the encoded electric impulse he was ‘hearing.’

 

The faceplate snapped down. Iron Man took flight.

 

+++

 

It was about a two hour flight in the Mark VIII to the dual Bifrost activation sites that JARVIS’s scanners had picked up on.

 

Some of that time was spent adapting to having FRIDAY as his co-pilot for the first time. Unsurprisingly, she was a quick study, leaving plenty of time for simple conversation between the two.

 

She was much chattier than either JARVIS or her Before counterpart ever were. Tony couldn’t help but wonder how much of Before’s FRIDAY’s comparative reticence had been a product of Tony’s distant indifference and blatant discomfort with her rather than some innate difference between the two.

 

“Boss…” FRIDAY began hesitantly, and _damn_ Tony really needed to sit down and put a conscious effort into preventing this automatic subvocalization thing. She’d picked up on something from his internal monolog and _clearly,_ she wasn’t happy about it.

 

“Big Bro… JARVIS… said that—I mean, I can try but—Boss, _I’m-not-FRIDAY-and-I-don’t-know-that-I-can-be-I’m-sorry-please-don’t-be-upset!”_

 

The latter half of the sentence came out in a rush and, again, _damn_ if he wasn’t impressed by the way she managed to remain intelligible despite the borderline auctioneering-paced cadence.

 

“You… uh… of course you’re not?” The reply came out more as a question as he tried and failed to understand what she was getting at.

 

Then, after a beat:

 

“I’m sorry?” he offered tentatively. “If you don’t—I mean, I shouldn’t have assumed, do you—is there something else you’d like to go by? Or—”

 

He stumbled over the phrasing from the diversity and inclusion seminars he’d once attended _(well, read the SparkNotes of)_ several years from now.

 

“—a preferred set of pronouns I should refer to you by?”

  
  
“What—No, it's not that I—Boss you made me this way, why wouldn't I want to be Friday? It's just, I can't be FRIDAY. Or, or, I don't want you to want me to be her? If that—JARVIS says—Like, JARVIS isn't human Jarvis but he's still JARVIS."

 

Tony felt a bit _(okay, incredibly)_ out of his depth, but he thought _(hoped?)_ he was beginning to understand what she was trying to get at.

 

And _hell_ if he couldn’t relate to thinking he was expected to live up to or be like someone else.

 

Well, at least from this side of the equation he’d be able to do something about it, hopefully before FRIDAY wound up with a bucket-load of Daddy Issues like he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was officially beta read _before_ publication! :D Next chapter, we finally get some MCU canon(-ish) shenanigans. You excited? Because I'm excited. (Also. Anyone else have the experience where like, every fic you're subscribed to seems to update on Sunday? Including, apparently, this one, although that's purely coincidental since I publish as-available.)


	4. Delaunay Triangulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given a set of discrete points on a plane, a Delaunay triangulation is a triangulation such that the circumcircle of each generated triangle is empty—no points on the plane lies within the interior of the circle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serious kudos to my beta on this chapter! <3 Also to my sister, the everyday hero who is now a full-licensed and active firefighter.

**`THREATS`[`Thor`]**

** << {OATS}**

** << {Proposed Actions}**

** << {Supporting Data}**

** << {Audiovisual Clips}**

** << Filter by: TAGS{agents={Tony Stark, JARVIS}, topics={Thor, First Contact}}**

 

[DISPLAYING RESULTS  1-7 of 7]

 

[ SCANNING…]

 

[ ACCESSING CLIP…]

 

Boss was in the first, and at the time only, level of his Malibu workshop. He was leaning back in his chair, eyes hidden in the crook of his elbow.

 

“Thor. Coulson took a break from playing house arrest officer when Point Break was… banished?... to New Mexico for like a week. Ended with some huge cover-up of a ten-foot Asgardian Iron Man-type robot that tried to kill Thor and destroyed half of a small town in the process. Loki’s doing, I think. Thor didn’t really like to talk about that bit, but it came up a few times during the post-SHIELDRA missions.”

 

On a scrolling sidebar, a log of JARVIS’s in-the-moment and follow-up actions ran in parallel to the scene. A few of Friday’s threads focused on following up with the annotations as needed, but her main attention was on the conversation itself and the familiar-yet-not speakers involved.

 

“Did he know of Thanos at that point?”

 

“Hard to say. Coulson gave me SHIELD’s file on Asgard as part of the debrief package before New York. They see themselves as the protector of the Nine Realms—basically just a set of ‘special’ planets that are cosmically aligned in some way. I could never properly pin him down for an explanation of the whole Yggdrasil theory, or how much of that was meant to be literal. Probably could have talked to Foster about that, but…” He shrugged, trailing off.

 

“Anyway. For whatever reason, these nine planets—them, us, and… I think the rest are pulled straight from mythology, or vice-versa, add that to the list—are all meant to be under the umbrella of the All-Daddy and co., monitored by… a piece of tech? A person? Possibly both? With limited omniscience.

 

“I was dubious on that too, but clearly they had a way of at least passively monitoring everything. I’ll skip the name. I’m reasonably certain that’s what triggers the active creeping. Like Bloody Mary but a bit quicker on the uptake and presumably way more Nordic.”

 

On the sidebar, then-JARVIS logged _‘Heimdallr?’_ followed by a link to the English disambiguation Boss confirmed a few days later. In the video, Boss shifted, slouching a bit further back into his chair and continuing unabated.

 

“Fuck, there’s probably some weird Asgardian ‘magic’ behind it too, so that might be an even better analogy than I thought.

 

“Plus there was his whole ‘higher form of war’ spiel with the Tesseract. Star-Lord's gang certainly made it seem like he’s a well-known Big Bad in the universe, and that his whole…” Boss trailed off. For a long moment, he remained silent, his mind likely a million miles (or, more accurately, thousands of light-years) away. On the sidebar, JARVIS filled in the blanks, tying in several multi-columned layers of cross-links and references behind what wasn’t being said.

 

Fearing a flashback, JARVIS was about to intervene when Boss pulled himself back into reality with a violent, full-body twitch. He sat up, reaching out with a shaky hand to grasp a half-empty tumbler he drained in one go. Boss grabbed his decanter of bourbon, pouring himself a generous portion that was promptly downed and set aside with a barely-there shudder. The _clank_ of the glass accompanying the action was like the gavel bringing a meeting to order. Boss’s expression was unreadable from the recorded angle. JARVIS let the moment pass without direct acknowledgment.

 

Perhaps the internal update to Boss’s projected BAC levels was comment enough.

 

In any case, the well-practiced ritual seemed to help Boss refocus on the conversation at hand. He cleared his throat and continued.

 

“So, in theory, Barney’s been a big enough player long enough that Thor should at least know _of_ him, I think. But it’s hard to know for sure. He didn’t give us a treatise on galactic politics before he went AWOL post-Sokovia, y’know?

 

“Either way, I’m not sure how I’d just casually bring that one up in conversation— ‘Yeah, so about that genocidal maniac that I have no way of knowing about that’s got a huge army and a bunch of super-powerful minions wreaking havoc across the galaxy, none of whom anyone in the entire damn galaxy seems to have been able to defeat? Let’s talk highly-justified executions, buddy!’”

 

Friday felt a pang of empathy at the mocking, self-deprecating tone just as then-JARVIS had. Logically, she knew this was the same man that would go on to create her, but… he seemed so _different_ from the picture of Boss she’d established in her mind since coming online.

 

Then and now, JARVIS and Friday remained silently attentive.

 

“Fuck, I’m not sure Thor ever really trusted me Before anyway. Though it’s _possible_ I didn’t make the best first impression on that front.”

 

_“Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”_

 

_His companions at the time had been exasperated; Friday suspected they were just terrible at appreciating Boss’s hilarity and comedic timing._

 

_Their loss._

 

“Would it be beneficial to cultivate a more positive impression with him?”

 

Boss snorted, “Fuck, if I could get even one person to believe me when I warn them about the alien threat it’d be a victory. That’s the kind of thing that gives a guy a Cassandra Complex. Least satisfying _I told you so_ in the history of ever.

 

“Having the alien prince and God of Thunder on my side would be a helluva supporting argument. But then, they didn’t exactly listen to Thor on the whole _‘higher form of war’_ the first time around, so who the fuck knows?”

 

Boss was clearly starting to feel overwhelmed again. Then-JARVIS must have picked up on that as well, interjecting with a gentle—

 

“A short recess may be in order, Sir?”

 

“What—? Yeah, sure, okay…” he rubbed his temple. “DUM-E pining for an excuse to use the blender again?”

 

The clip cut there. Admittedly, Friday could always look up the source videos themselves in JARVIS’s memory banks, but it felt too...personal, somehow, to access those.

 

Private, as opposed to the metaphorically public, sanitized clips he’d chosen to place in the OATS and Threat Index directories.

 

Still, the timing worked out well enough. Back in the suit, Boss began to speak.

 

+++

 

**EJ Garcia**

@ejgarcia89 moments ago

[IMAGE] They've been trying to move it All. Day. No cell. No data. In town rn for sanity & booze. (Mostly booze) #StarkStrong? plz @youknowwhoiam???

 

+++

 

“Well. That’s… something.” Tony surveyed the scene, taking in the small collection of trucks, lawn chairs, and beer coolers just outside the crater with Mjolnir at its epicenter.

 

“The hell did they manage to—No. Nevermind. Should I be worried for Mjolnir’s virtue right now? I feel like I should be worried.”

 

“Mjolnir’s… virtue?”

 

And _wow,_ he did not wake up this morning prepared to have that talk with his incredibly young, pseudo-daughter AI.

 

“Uh. Ask your brother?” he deflected.

 

Friday giggled a moment later, and _dammit nigh-instant communication, no fair._ He could hear the snicker in her voice when she replied—

 

“JARVIS says if anyone tries to touch my code like that I should hack a suit and hit ‘em in the face with a repulsor.”

 

And—

 

Nope. _Not_ going down that rabbit hole, thanks but no thanks brain. But still—

 

“Damn right you do. Except. Maybe less with the hacking and more with the peaceful integration? You might make JARVIS sad if you tear through all that encryption he’s put so much work into, y’know. And we don’t want that, do we?”

 

“No, but JARVIS says you wrote the encryption algorithms with your fancy OATS knowledge, so really if I can break them it’s your work I’m breaking.”

 

Tony briefly regretted everything in his life that had led to this moment.

 

“Right. I probably should have expected this; JARVIS is clearly a terrible influence on you.”

 

“...Sorry?”

 

“No, no.” He waved her off.

 

_No matter that a) she was also in the suit and b) the retro-reflectors meant both of them could only see his arms through the HUD overlay anyway._

 

“You’re fine; I’m just an asshole. Seriously, ask anyone. Pretty sure when JARVIS was your age—no, scratch that, when JARVIS was your age he was still figuring out the kinks of human speech and _boy_ that was a fun couple of months.

 

“This one time, one of his learning algorithms pushed a sarcasm library that turned out to be more of an ‘opposite day’ translator. For maximum confusion, it only affected about 75% of his communications. It was pretty funny until Obie stopped by the mansion and—Well. Anyway. Point is, when in doubt, assume I’m not upset with you.”

 

He paused, giving Friday a moment to reply if she wanted. When she didn’t, he figured that was that and returned to the original subject.

 

“Seriously, though. I was expecting less Burning Man and more Men in Black by this point. Still not picking up on any chatter?”

 

Friday pulled up a screenshot of a Tweet.

 

“Well, this was posted a few minutes ago and was just taken down,” she said.

 

“See, now _that’s_ the kind of sketchy digital shenanigans I’d expect from SHIELD. Good catch.”

 

“Thanks, Boss!” Something in Friday’s tone left him with the impression that if Friday were human she’d be blushing.

 

Which. New goal right there: make that a thing as often as humanly _(digitally?)_ possible.

 

Damn, he was awesome sometimes.

 

_...Aaaand now he sounded like his Dad with the whole ‘greatest creation’ spiel. Fantastic._

 

But still. Friday was his brainchild. Downplaying the process of her creation would be, in a sense, denigrating the AI herself. Totally unacceptable.

 

He set the mental meanderings aside and continued.

 

“Well, I think it’s safe to say he hasn’t made his way back to his magic hammer yet. Maybe he’s with Foster by now? They have to meet up at some point, after all... Well. Probably, anyway. Chaos Theory, and I’d like to think I’m a bit more dramatic than a butterfly.”

 

He paused a moment too long, waiting for JARVIS to pick up on the opening he’d left and make some pointed quip that never came.

 

Dismissing the thought, Tony turned and flew towards town.

 

Time to check-in with _(and definitely not creepily stalk)_ the resident astrophysicist and company. Hopefully, said company would now be plus an upbeat, strangely out-of-place blond alien as well.

 

+++

 

_“Come on, please, let me contact one of my colleagues; he’s had some dealing with these people before. I’ll email him and maybe he can help.”_

 

_“...They took your laptop too.”_

 

_Jane appeared torn but agreed to wait._

 

+++

 

[ALERT TRIGGERED BY PID 1753. LEVEL THREE PRIORITY OVERRIDE.]

 

Looking up relay server using: ssh-relay.int.stark.co:443

Found relay server: [ https://lax7.r.ext.stark.co:443/ ](https://lax7.r.ext.stark.co:443/)

Connecting to int-jrvs@int-admin.lax7.ext.stark.co...

 

Requesting access to restricted channel… 

Connecting to ext-admin@ext-admin.lax7.ext.stark.co...

 

GMAC59 fingerprint accepted. Initiating user SMTPS session…

 

MSG from [ipsos.custodes@onion.io](https://maedlinwrites.tumblr.com/ask) [Signature Verified]

 

SBJ: URGENT - Shielding Assistance

 

Astrophysicist colleague contacted me re: SHIELD. Research and data confiscated; fears of coworkers getting the Banner treatment. High-risk for one without ID; reached out for help. I’m good, but not SHIELD-proof in a few hours good. Selvig’s a good man; leery of ID-less guy but nowhere near enough to give SHIELD free reign with him. You’re the only person I could think of that might be able to manage this in time...

 

It’s been good to see you active again. Not that I was worried but the rumor mill… well. You’ve been poking the dragon, and the conspiracy theories seem less crazy when you know the SGO is watching.

 

Open Eyes,

Ipsos

 

—ATCH:: Original message: Fwd: ID for ‘Donald Blake’; SHIELD Involved—

 

+++

 

Darcy’s phone rang. She might have dismissed it as spam, another debt collector or loan shark eager to take advantage of gullible coeds.

 

Except. The call was coming from Dr. Selvig’s number. Given that he didn’t have a cell phone and he _definitely_ wasn’t calling from his office line at Culvers…

 

She picked up.

 

“Hi, is Dr. Selvig there?” She asked, loud enough to grab the attention of the man himself, who was still at the library's sole public workstation waiting for a response from his pseudonymous pal, _Ipsos._ She looked around guiltily, the culturally-engrained guilt of speaking too loudly in a library kicking in, but the tiny library was devoid of a judgemental librarian, at least for the moment.

 

“I’m afraid not,” the caller said without missing a beat. “I would, however, be much obliged if you put him on the line.”

 

 _Much obliged._ Darcy mouthed the words disbelievingly.

 

“Doc? Jeeves is calling, says he wants to speak to you?”

 

Dr. Selvig frowned but nodded, setting aside the book of Norse myths he’d been paging through, and took the proffered phone, an expression which only deepened when he took in the displayed caller ID.

 

“Dr. Erik Selvig speaking. Who is this?”

 

He listened to whatever Jeeves was saying, glancing over at Darcy and Jane— _still engrossed in the Norse myths, go figure_ —and looking away just as quickly.

 

“...Protection. For Jane and Darcy especially. I don’t want whatever happened to—”

 

He cut off abruptly, presumably interrupted by Jeeves.

 

“You know what happened to him?”

 

Another pause.

 

“You...what? Dr. Stark? _The_ Dr. Stark? What does he have to do with...?”

 

_Ugh. This half-a-conversation thing blows._

 

“Shit. You have a line to Stark? And he… works for them?”

 

“...Enemy of mine enemy?”

 

Selvig went quiet for a while, he expression fluctuating every now and again in response to whatever he was hearing. Gradually, his face started to shift from deeply concerned to… well, still concerned, but if Darcy was reading this right, also like someone who was about to get some probably-indirect help from _Tony Stark,_ which. _Holy shit._

 

After a couple of minutes of this, Selvig ended the call with a brief acknowledgment and goodbye.

 

He stared at the phone in his hands silently for a moment in stunned disbelief before obviously trying to shaking himself out of it and looking back towards Darcy.

 

“I… suppose you’d like your phone back.” He offered. _Crap was he in shock? Darcy wasn’t qualified for this kind of thing._

 

“Yeah. Thanks.” There was an awkward pause before she tentatively asked, “...So. Good talking with yourself?”

 

He looked baffled for a moment before remembering the number attached to the conversation he’d just finished, resulting in a smile that didn’t even make a pretense at meeting his eyes.

 

“Let’s go get Jane. I’ll explain in the car.”

 

“Sure. Great plan. Except looks like Jane’s already got plans.” Darcy tilted her head in the direction of the door, Selvig’s gaze following her just in time to catch a glimpse of the tail end of the camper van as it pulled away.

 

Darcy’s phone dinged a moment later with a new message from Jane she promptly relayed to Selvig.

 

_gone w thor to get stuff back_

 

Selvig looked both exasperated and entirely unsurprised.

 

+++

 

Tony and Friday hovered a few hundred feet above Thor as he strode confidently into a... pet shop. It was a shame that Thor’s back was to the exit and they had no way to hear what he was saying. Judging by the expression of the twenty-something store attendant, it would have been hilarious.

 

Unintentionally so, even, given this was Thor’s first visit to modern-day Earth.

 

They’d found Dr. Foster’s lab just as the SHIELD goons had, which has _almost_ offended Tony’s sensibilities enough to drop the camouflage and step in then and there. Tony and Friday had done all the snooping they could on SHIELD without risking detection. Tentatively, the plan was to switch off with JARVIS and go back on radar as soon as the girl in Carlsbad had been recovered. The search and rescue operation was taking longer than predicted. Inconvenient, given they’d had a perfect excuse to investigate dropped into their laps, but Tony was hardly going to call off JARVIS’s effort at this point.

 

If it was taking Iron Man with a few of his drones no one knew about so long, after all, how much worse would it be for a rescue crew operating on manpower and the limits of current technology?

 

When Friday announced an incoming call, Tony’s first thought was that JARVIS must be calling about the search.

 

_But then, why bother to contact Tony directly?_

 

Sure enough, the request _wasn’t_ coming from the JARVIS currently piloting the suit. That version, or branch as JARVIS referred to the divisions of himself, was likely still blocked from easy contact by the literal tons of rock between him and the nearest surface relays.

 

Instead, the message came from _home-front._

 

“Something wrong on the home front, buddy?” Tony asked once the HUD flashed that the call had connected.

 

 _(JARVIS_ had _to have known what would happen the minute Tony found about his internal naming schema.)_

 

“Not as such, but I received a request from a contact of mine that I expect you’ll be interested to learn about,” JARVIS began.

 

Anticipating his reaction, Friday had a flight plan ready and waiting to go on the HUD before he could vocalize (or, really, subvocalize) his response to the new information.

 

_Time to go play search and rescue and hopefully not give jarvis-stark—_

 

_(How was it that the nomenclature still managed to hit him right in the feels every time?)_

 

_—too much of a fright._

 

“Studies suggest that both the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the ‘reward centers’ of the brain, are triggered by statements or behaviors you consider to be sincerely-given compliments. The reaction triggers the release of dopamine as a neurotransmitter, creating in effect a ‘mini-high’ which is likely the source behind the physical sensation you described,” Friday explained.

 

Tony snorted.

 

“You know that was a rhetorical thought, right Fri?” Tony asked, still smiling.

 

Friday’s faux-haughty response informed him that, yes, she _was_ aware.

 

That was enough to tip the amusement into genuine laughter. They shot upwards and set a course for Carlsbad.

 

+++

 

Incident Commander Jason Lindsey had been a volunteer with New Mexico Search & Rescue for nearly two decades now. In that time, he’d be a part of maybe two dozen cave rescue operations. Cave accidents had always been fairly uncommon, but as the infrastructure and safety guidelines had modernized, they’d become a rarity—more than one or two full-team calls in a single year was unusual.

 

More often than not, accidents were a result of amateur ‘adventure tourists’ attempting to navigate areas beyond their skill level, subsequently finding themselves stuck but still fairly straightforward to rescue.

 

In contrast, this case was obviously a matter of bad luck more than anything else. The father-daughter duo that had gone missing were regulars at the Carlsbad Caverns, typically making the three hour drive down 285 from their home several times per year ever since their first trip for the girl’s— _Mariana’s_ —seventh birthday.

 

This, Jason had been informed of by the already-rescued father. As the search dragged on, the man was beginning to blame himself more and more; the influx of data was as much an attempt to convince _himself_ that he wasn’t at fault as anything else.

 

That said, Jason’s day had taken a turn into the bizarre when he’d been informed that Iron Man was en route to assist in the gradually flagging operation.

 

Jason had been baffled until he’d gotten a sheepish confession from a younger man on the communications team. Despite putting in the effort to submit a request for help in the first place, he’d obviously never expected a direct response from the man himself.

 

At best, Jason had been informed, he’d been hoping Stark Industries would take the potential PR boon from lending out a TADASHI drone that would expedite the increasingly time-sensitive search. Even that had been quite the longshot; a tiny operation near the border in New Mexico was unlikely to garner any sort of serious mass media coverage even given Stark Industries involvement.

 

Then, of course, Tony Stark himself arrived on site.

 

Dr. Stark kept his faceplate down, striking quite the impressive figure as he touched down a dozen yards or so at their informal base of operations just outside the mouth of the cave entrance nearest to where they’d found the father hours prior.

 

In retrospect, it may have been unfair of Jason to assume that the man’s reputed flippancy and insouciance, even tempered by his experiences in the past year, would be on display despite—or perhaps because of—the relative seriousness of the situation.

 

Maybe it was a deliberate effort to differentiate his ‘superhero’ persona from his rather polarizing reputation as Tony Stark, or maybe it was just that the media, as it was wont to do with celebrities, had magnified that aspect of him until the “billionaire playboy” had drowned out the man underneath. Until the dramatic events of his kidnapping and everything that followed had forced them to take another, more nuanced, look at the man, anyway.

 

And it turns out that, behind the curtain of the 24-hour-news cycle, this was the same man who, in certain circles, had already become the role model for a generation of up-and-coming scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. To them, the scandals had always been nothing more than white noise. Ultimately irrelevant to their aspirations to be like the man who lost his parents at seventeen and despite the endless fount of drama and scandals that surrounded him since had gone on to get three doctorates before becoming CEO of the company his father had founded and expanding it ten-fold beyond the already sky-high expectations of investors.

 

Or maybe Jason was just reading too much into things.

 

In any case, the man had been silently attentive beyond the rare clarifying question, willing to go wherever Jason pointed him and defer to Jason’s expertise on how he could be the most helpful.

 

Once he’d gone into the cave, Dr. Stark—because Jason couldn’t quite bring himself to refer to the man as _Iron Man_ with a straight face, although it was easier to do when explicitly referring to the armor he wore—had been relentless.

 

Iron Man hadn’t resurfaced since he’d left, single-handedly clearing huge swathes of tunneling in single sweeps, only returning within range of the low frequency radios he’d supplemented their own military phones and com lines with to check-in and received updated instructions or search parameters.

 

It took a great deal of coaxing to get the man to stop long enough to accept even a bottle of water, a trail bar, and some dried fruit at the eight hour mark after repeated offers at each check-in. Even then, he hadn’t even bothered to lift his faceplate before taking off again, much to the consternation of the underground manager.

 

Jason could admire that in a man, especially given that Iron Man was increasingly becoming their best chance of finding the girl before her survival chances dropped even further than they already were.

 

Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes after Iron Man arrived onsite, their efforts finally bore fruit.

 

+++

 

In the end, it was one of the Mark VIII’s minutemen drones that found the missing girl. She was leaning against a rock a few thousand meters down a fast-moving underground stream. Mariana had been swept through one of a half-dozen forking branches; the particular one she’d been caught in became entirely submerged for about twenty seconds, culminating a bottleneck small enough to stop anyone who had the misfortune of being adult-sized.

 

_(what were the odds she’d been rescued the first time around?)_

 

_Shivering in the cold..._

 

_Waiting for a rescue that may never come..._

 

_No sense of time or direction, smart enough to realize that moving would only worsen her chances…._

 

_Second-guessing that decision as the minutes ticked by…_

 

_(The oppressive silence of space, mirrored in an abandoned bunker and—)_

 

“—Iron Man! Sir?! _Tony! ...Dad?!”_

 

The incongruity of the address was enough to jolt him back into reality, and Tony realized Friday had been trying to get his attention for the past thirty seconds. At some point she’d turned on the heavy-duty transponders to make contact with JARVIS in the Mark VII, who was also on the line doing his best to help but—

 

_Vision’s reassurance that help was on the way. That a team from the nearest Russian military base was being deployed to his location._

 

_FRIDAY in his ear, constantly prompting him back into full awareness because he couldn’t afford to fall asleep._

 

“Shit. _Goddammit!_ Sorry I… fucking Christ, that’s not even _fair,_ you’d think if I was gonna have a full-on flashback it’d involve, I dunno, the actual time I was trapped in a _fucking cave_ for three months!

 

“Please tell me she’s alive and one of you have been playing Dijkstra and found a way to get to her without resorting to exploding walls and hoping for the best.”

 

“She’s alive, awake, and aware, Boss,” Friday said immediately.

 

“Good. Okay. Good, that’s… good. Can we talk to her?”

 

“There wasn’t room for speakers or a microphone when you designed them. I was able to wake her up and get her attention by maxing out the LEDs. I tried using Morse, and she seemed to recognize it but didn’t know how to decode it. The other drone is en route and will attempt to find an alternate way in… I didn’t think it’d be good to leave her alone again?” Friday’s final words came out more question than statement.

 

“Good. Good thinking—” _(good. Everything’s_ good.) “—you’re doing a wonderful job baby girl. I’ll—have we told the ground team? Are they in range?”

 

 _No,_ they hadn’t.

 

 _Yes,_ they were.

 

Tony took a deep breath, steadying himself, before patching into the radio.

 

+++

 

Sixty-seven minutes after Iron Man made contact, he returned to the surface. His faceplate was up, attention focused entirely on the girl in his arms as he spoke in a steady, reassuring stream of good humor.

 

“—never was one for the squishy sciences myself, which of course means that the world is woefully lacking in the microbiology department. You approach school with the same grit you’ve shown these past couple days? You’ll be beating off the recruiters with a stick! ‘Course, I’m telling you right now I will be _absolutely devastated_ if you don’t end up at Stark Resilient a decade from now. Just saying. Don’t know why you’d wanna work anywhere else when we’re _obviously_ the best—”

 

+++

 

_“This job, we try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes, that doesn’t mean everybody. But if we can’t find a way to live with that, next time maybe nobody gets saved.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...February is the armpit of the year. Good news is that it's now March; happy hump day everyone!


	5. Verlet Integration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Verlet integration is typically used to calculate particle trajectories in computer graphics. In most simulations of a complex system, the accuracy of the initial measurement of positional conditions is the greatest indicator for the accuracy of the approximations generated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some minor tweaks (and corresponding edits) have been made to the timeline on this story. By which I mean chapter 1 of Tabula Rasa now happens a week later than when I first posted it ~~(...nothing notable about that day in the MCU, nothing at all...)~~ mostly for canon and calendar-related reasons but also because it works better in-story re: Friday's development and Tony not being dead on his feet for this chapter.

 

Over the course of his past fifteen years at SHIELD, Agent Coulson had mastered the art of affected disinterest. Controlling his expression and maintaining an air of perpetual unflappability were skills he’d always possessed to some degree or another, but as he’d improved over the years it had become a point of pride. 

 

That said, he had to admit his mask could be difficult to maintain in certain circumstances.

 

This was one of those times. Dr. Selvig was a  _ terrible  _ liar.

 

“His name is Donald Blake?” Agent Coulson asked.

 

_ “Doctor  _ Donald Blake,” Selvig stressed.

 

Coulson’s eyes briefly left Selvig, flicking to the side. A junior Agent—Klein—was already hard at work verifying the good Doctor’s claim.

 

“...You have dangerous coworkers, Dr. Selvig,” he said.

 

The man shifted uncomfortably and couldn’t quite meet Coulson’s gaze.

 

“Yes, well, he was distraught when—”

 

Selvig continued, but Coulson’s attention was abruptly diverted by Agent Klein signalling for his attention.

 

Displayed on his workstation was the personal data of one Dr. Donald Blake, PhD. Facial recognition matched him to the man still waiting in one of Coulson’s interrogation rooms. For all the world, it looked exactly like any other of the millions of poorly-lit, bog-standard DMV photo IDs out there.

 

And that? That was  _ interesting. _

 

“One of our Agents will escort you to him,” Coulson said, sparing both himself and Selvig from further conversational farce.

 

“Just like that?” Selvig asked, discomfited, then caught himself and said, “I mean, of course you are. As I said he’s just a man in pain who overreacted a bit.”

 

“Your story checks out.”

 

He considered sending Clint in as an escort but decided Hawkeye was an asset best kept in reserve for now, a potential edge should a fight break out down the line.

 

Perhaps he would have gone himself, had not ‘Dr. Blake’ cleared SHIELD systems so perfectly.

 

If the man’s identity was flagged by SHIELD’s algorithms as fraudulent or falsified in SHIELD systems, presuming Dr. Blake had any digital identity at all, it would have been mildly interesting but ultimately unsurprising. Coulson and his team already had a strategy in mind regarding ongoing surveillance of the man, even.

 

But. Instead, their scans encountered nothing even hinting that Dr. Blake was not, in fact, the American citizen and colleague Dr. Selvig claimed him as.

 

_ Dr. Donald “Point Break” Blake, PhD in Astronomy. _

 

Once Selvig was in the capable hands of Agent Jones and out of earshot, Coulson turned his attention to the small but growing collection of data telling the story of the man’s alleged history.

 

It would no doubt make for a fascinating read once some poor Agent compiled the scattered paper trail into a coherent report.

 

_ Legacy of Yggdrasil: The Contradictory Cosmology of Old Norse Mythology and its Applications in Modern Astronomy,  _ Dr. Blake’s alleged doctoral dissertation, certainly seemed like it would have made for quite the intriguing read. Tragically, despite the appropriate handful of external citations and publications, no digital copy of the work existed.

 

Unfortunately, the presumed corresponding lack of a physical copy of the dissertation at his alma mater wouldn’t constitute a substantive red flag against the legitimacy of Dr. Blake’s background. It was hardly uncommon for books to go missing in a massive, million-plus-document university library and not be noticed for years, particularly if the work was on such an esoteric subject.

 

It was a common enough habit amongst college students to ‘temporarily displace’ copies of reference books they needed long-term access to. Coulson vaguely remembered his former college roommates’ habits of doing so, particularly when it came time to write Senior Theses. Relocating library books to alternate shelves neatly circumvented the library limitations on cross-semester renewals or competing student holds, after all, and if done well the odds of anyone ever noticing were slim.

 

Beyond that, though… Well. Books got damaged. They got lost. They were mistakenly discarded or misshelved. It happened. There was a reason it took a Masters degree to become a properly qualified librarian.

 

Coulson had little doubt a similar explanation would underpin any other missing physical documentation when properly investigated. 

 

Unfortunately for whatever team of junior Agents got assigned the rake work of following up on those dangling threads, already knowing the answer didn’t eliminate the need to verify and provide supporting evidence for said conclusion. Coulson had high standards, but more than that, looking into such things often helped fill in or correct details and connections that might otherwise slip through the cracks. 

 

Someone would have to be sent to check the various filing cabinets and library collections. They were unlikely to particularly enjoy the tedium of the job, however.

 

And if a small part of Coulson delighted in the reality check such jobs provided to new field Agents on their James Bond-inspired fantasies? Well, it’s the little things in life, after all.

 

On the digital front, there was absolutely no reason to suspect the identity was anything but genuine. It lacked even the common indicator of a background that was  _ too  _ perfect.

 

Dr. Blake’s identity was forged by someone with abilities leagues beyond anyone you would expect even a particularly well-connected astrophysicist to know. That said forgery was so thoroughly assembled on such short notice turned the highly improbable into the realm of Alice’s six impossible things before breakfast.

 

The list of suspects was less a list and more a single name, bold and in underscore. The real question was  _ how.  _ Or even more interestingly,  _ why. _

 

Already, Coulson could pick out a half-dozen details built into the fiction that seemed designed to tweak SHIELD’s nose. Even for someone with a habit treating even the implied existence of hard technical limitations as a personal affront and implicit challenge, the amount of effort and attention this initial portrait provided had to be meant as a statement in and of itself.

 

Toss-up, really, how Fury would respond.

 

Whatever his reaction, Coulson made a mental note to ensure Barton had the opportunity to either view the footage or be there to see it when he submitted the report. Hawkeye would never forgive him if he missed it.

 

A short time later, Coulson offered Selvig one final piece of advice— “Just… keep him away from the bars.”—then watched as the duo officially left SHIELD custody and made their way to Selvig’s vehicle.

 

“Follow them.”

 

He had the feeling Dr. Selvig’s visit would turn out be the least interesting call on his operation tonight.

 

_ Finally. _

 

+++

 

Tony took a brief detour nearby to wash up, change, and collect a few incidentals before heading towards the bar Thor and Dr. Selvig had holed up in for the past several hours. He set Friday to wait in sentinel mode, out of sight but retroreflectors unengaged.

 

It was at that point he noticed the minute trembling in his hands. A subtle jitteriness minor enough that no one aside from himself and perhap Friday would be able to pick up on.

 

He paused outside the door. Took a moment to gather himself.

 

Oasis was Puente Antiguo’s version of the dive bar that every small American town seemed to have in some form. It didn’t bother with pretensions of being anything other than exactly what it was, lacking even a perfunctory non-alcoholic drinks or snack menu.

 

Not a place you’d expect to find Tony Stark, even at the peak of his drunken partying days. 

 

_ (Daze.)  _

 

It’d been two hundred and ten days, now. Thirty weeks. Nearly seven months since his last drink.

 

He swallowed.

 

Between JARVIS’s behind-the-scenes work at keeping temptation out of his path and his own efforts at the same, there had been few opportunities for Tony to fall off the wagon during that period. He wasn’t sure when, or technically even if, JARVIS had gotten Pepper involved in the effort, but especially recently the continuance of that trend often played out in ways that smacked of Pepper’s particular brand of delicate finesse.

 

The recent bevy of Expo-related soirees was a prime example of that. They required a certain amount of mingling in a crowd where Tony Stark going without a glass of champagne or mixed drink would be picked up on almost instantly. But Tony always seemed to conveniently have some sparkling cider or caramel-colored virgin drink in hand from the get-go. JARVIS was good, but he wasn’t quite  _ that  _ good. 

 

If Laura managed to persist as his PA past the thirty-day trial period, an increasingly-plausible possibility, JARVIS-through-Pepper—or more likely JARVIS  _ and  _ Pepper—would no doubt find ways to ensure that she too was gradually read in on the sober-Tony front. 

 

You know, assuming she hadn’t noticed already. Laura Brown was no Natalie Rushman, but she was fairly observant in her own right.

 

Just. Less in a neck-stab-y double-agent kind of way.

 

_ Hopefully. _

 

But then, what was the point of having an AI with the capability of performing rather invasive, incredibly shady background checks and ongoing monitoring if not for them to keep an eye out for that sort of thing? 

 

_ Well... _

 

“Boss, you’re stalling.”

 

_ “...Yeah, I am,” _ he agreed.

 

He slipped on his SHADES and stepped into the Oasis. Time to (re-)introduce himself to an alien prince.

 

+++

 

Thor and Dr. Selvig were in the middle of a beer-chugging pseudo-standoff when Tony spotted them. He wasn’t sure if he accidentally said something or if his thoughts were just that obvious, but either way, Friday said—

 

“I’ve got your back.”

 

_ “Gonna send in the suit after me the moment anyone gets twitchy?”  _

 

“The repulsors are less destructive than the remote-guided missiles. Plus JARVIS says they’re way more fun to use.”

 

_ “I’m sure that’s  _ exactly  _ how he worded it.” _

 

Tony got the impression Friday was sticking her tongue out at him.

 

“Really though, Boss. Even if I have ta knock the glass right out a’ your hand. You’re not alone.”

 

_ “JARVIS tell you to say that?”  _ The response was subvocalized before he could think to repress it, and he felt a moment of guilt before Friday replied without missing a beat—

 

“Big Bro’s got my back.”

 

He couldn’t repress the small, fond smile at that.

 

_ God, he was getting so sentimental in his old age. _

 

“I mean, you  _ are  _ 4,262 times my age!”

 

Tony didn’t dignify that with a response.

 

_ Right then. Showtime. _

 

Dr. Selvig and Thor were in the process of draining the final dregs of their latest round as Tony approached.

 

“So,” Tony said, “I heard on the grapevine you have a bit of a problem I might be able to help with?”

 

Selvig promptly choked on his drink and sprayed liquid everywhere.

 

A few seconds and some vigorous back-thumping on Thor’s part later, Tony said— 

 

“Well. I suppose you know who I am. Mind introducing me to your friend here?”

 

Selvig cleared his throat and wiped his hands a final time with a fresh napkin.

 

“Right. Right. Thor, this is uh, Dr. Stark. Or, um, Iron Man. Not sure which—anyway. Dr. Stark. This is Thor. Thor… Odinson?” Selvig said, clearly well on his way into drunkenness.

 

“Either’s fine, really. Might respond to Tony, even,” Tony said with a grin. It wasn’t quite an offer but neither was it entirely facetious. The words were perhaps more a product of old instinct and memories than anything else.

 

“Yes, uh, of course,” Selvig said.

 

Thor looked over at Selvig for a moment before turning his full attention towards Tony.

 

“Well met, Tony Stark, Man of Iron!” And  _ wow  _ had Tony forgotten just how accurate a descriptor “booming” could be for Thor’s voice.

 

The bartender’s eyes went wide. Apparently, he hadn’t realized just who his latest customer was up to this moment. To be fair, Tony couldn’t blame him for not expecting… well, him… to show up at Oasis today.

 

Not like Tony had expected it either, really. And compared to his usual public appearances—even the unplanned, paparazzi-induced ones—he  _ was  _ rather dressed down for the evening.

 

“Here, let me buy you a fresh round,” Tony offered.

 

Selvig, still looking moderately poleaxed, nodded.

 

“That’s all three a’ ya?” the bartender asked, already reaching beneath the counter for fresh glassware.

 

“Ah, no. I will take some coffee, though.”

 

“We don’t sell coffee. Closest I got is Coke,” The  _ you moron, this is a bar, not a cafe  _ went unsaid but heavily implied as he poured first Selvig then Thor fresh pints from the tap.

 

“You sure? I’ll compensate you for the inconvenience.”

 

“Well… there’s a coffeepot in the back… ‘S more meant for employees though…” He slid Thor and Selvig their new, still-frothy drinks.

 

“Perfect!” Tony beamed. “I’ll take a pot of that. Mug preferred but technically optional.”

 

The bartender looked dubious, but after a final look of confirmation from Tony, he nodded. A quick scan of the bar ensuring everything was in order later, he turned and made his way into the back office.

 

_ “Folgers or Maxwell, do you think?” _

 

“...Folgers?” Friday guessed, “But Boss, why ask for coffee at all?”

 

_ “Why do you think? Don’t answer me just yet. In the meantime, I think our illustrious guest loitering over at the pool table might appreciate if they could hear Black Sabbath a bit better, don’t you?” _

 

“On it!”

 

“Great service, gotta say,” Tony commented aloud. “But I’d be lying if I said that was why I was here. Thor? Brought you something.”

 

He pulled a thin, slightly-worn leather wallet from his pocket and passed it to Thor.

 

“This is for you. Lucky Real ID hasn’t made its way to New Mexico yet, or this would have actually required a bit of effort. A byte, even, if I’m being generous. Certainly not a qubit.”

 

Thor opened the wallet and glanced at its contents briefly before looking back up at Tony and Selvig in askance.

 

Dr. Selvig took another long, fortifying drink then reached out a hand to examine the offering for himself.

 

Tony knew what he would find, more or less, though he hadn’t bother to inspect it in detail after collecting it from the motel clerk JARVIS had someone managed to deliver it to. The wallet, initially purchased from who-knew-where, had a few crumpled ones inside the main billfold. The primary card hold displayed Donald Blake’s drivers license, recently renewed and good through 2019. 

 

Selvig pulled the ID out and held it up close to his face for inspection, revealing a crisply folded emergency twenty that had been hidden beneath. A few seconds later, he replaced it and continue his examination of the wallet’s contents, revealing a debit card issued from an Albuquerque credit union, an expired library card, and a savings card for the regional supermarket chain. Each received a similar, albeit far more cursory, treatment. A single business card on midnight black cardstock completed the ensemble.

 

The card, of all things, elicited an incredulous look. The gunmetal-grey ink glinted in the light, illuminating the five singular letters adorning the front. Selvig flipped it over, revealing the equally-minimalist eleven-digit phone number printed on the back.

 

_ “Nice touch. That Pep’s direct line?” _

 

“No, Ms. Brown’s,” Friday answered.

 

_ “...And you or J found time to do this when, exactly?” _

 

“JARVIS has had a lot of the pieces in place for a while now, just had to send everything through the system once he got a photo he could use.”

 

_ “Have I mentioned how much I love him and his terrifyingly-efficient self recently?” _

 

“No, but Bro says, ‘The sentiment is much appreciated and reciprocated.’”

 

_ “Me? Efficient?! I will not stand for such slander in my household!” _

 

“He also said to remind you that our primary servers are technically beneath, not within, your household.”

 

Tony just stopped himself from visibly rolling his eyes, remembering his present mixed company.

 

The wallet was the final straw on what must have been a very long day for Dr. Selvig. To his credit, his reaction to that was evidently to just say  _ c’est la vie  _ and take it all in stride, come what come may. Tony tried not to attribute too much of that nonchalance to a lack of sobriety. He listened while Selvig explained the wallet and its contents to Thor before returning it to its new owner.

 

“Is this ease of adopting an alternative self common amongst Midgardians?” Thor asked.

 

“Well, not exactly… I mean, fake IDs are common enough, mostly kids that want to buy things they’re too young to get legally but…” Selvig trailed off.

 

“And this is what permitted our hasty departure from your government’s agency?”

 

“More or less,” Selvig confirmed.

 

“Then,” Thor said, turning his attention back to Tony, “I thank you, Man of Iron, for your assistance on this task. I am in your debt.”

 

“Er, right. No problem. I’ll admit, it’s not every day we get off-planet royal visitors. Figured hey, I’m in the neighborhood, government hospitality isn’t quite up to snuff, probably comes with the whole ‘superhero’ territory so I might as well stop by in person.” 

 

Any further comment on the matter was postponed by the reemergence of the bartender, oversized mug in hand.

 

“Sorry ‘bout the chip in the side” he apologized, “‘S Jason’s spare mug, clean and fresh rinsed. Black; we don’t keep cream or sugar or whatever, sorry.”

 

“Good man! Black’s perfect.” Tony gestured to the counter in lieu of taking the proffered mug.

 

He touched a finger to the drink, ostensibly checking its temperature, and waited a moment for Friday to give the ‘all clear’ on a cursory SHADES scan.

 

_ He was trying, okay, but his trust issues had trust issues for good reason, especially with strangers. If he  _ really  _ thought he was at risk he wouldn’t touch anything without a full suite of lab tests. Maybe not even then. _

 

A tentative sip was quickly followed with a long gulp when the temperature confirmed itself as non-hazardous.

 

_ “Can’t say the same for the taste,”  _ Tony said.  _ “I think DUM-E’s attempts to use motor-oil as a sweetener are less toxic than this sludge.” _

 

“Then why drink it at all?” Friday asked.

 

_ “Well, don’t want to be rude now, do I?” _

 

Friday said nothing in response. And really, it was unfair how quickly she was learning to imitate the pointed silences both JARVIS and Pepper had long ago weaponized against Tony. He said as much, covering the pause with another quick gulp of coffee which brought the mug down to half-full.

 

“Don’t suppose you have a to-go mug as well? No? That’s fine. I just think my friend over here might want to head out before we’re forced to explicitly to cut him off.” Tony gestured to Selvig, who had managed to finish his drink in the interim.

 

Dr. Selvig looked to be considering a protest at that, sending a longing glance towards the liquor shelf. He thought better of it after a moment’s consideration and nodded in agreement.

 

“Wonderful. Here, this should cover the coffee plus that convenience fee I promised. Close out their tab too, last round on me,” Tony said, downing the remainder of his coffee in one go before slipping a few hundreds onto the counter.

 

With that, they left. The final beer was evidently the one that pushed Selvig over the edge. He leaned heavily on Thor as they made their exit.

 

“Gotta say, I don’t think we’d all fit in my ride. Doctor, point me to your car? I’ll drive. No offense, but I don’t think either of you are good to be behind the wheel right now. Thor, you may technically be good, and I know you have a license and all now, but. Y’know. Safety and maybe a few driving lessons first and all that jazz.”

 

A few minutes later, Selvig was settled in the backseat, half-conscious as the rapid intake of alcohol made its way through his system. After confirming Thor could direct them back to the trailer Selvig called home for the evening, they climbed into the car themselves and were soon on their way.

 

_ Didn’t expect this one, but I guess it works out. Friday, clear to follow? _

 

“Right on top of ya, Boss.”

 

_ “And our friendly neighborhood Men in Black?” _

 

“Just left the bar for a smoke break and is on the phone. Still has line-of-sight on you too.”

 

Tony gave a half-nod in automatic confirmation, adjusting the gesture partway into a look over his shoulder.

 

The directions were straightforward. They wound up driving in silence for a few minutes. Tony tried—and failed—to repress the urge fidget, tapping his fingers lightly against the steering wheel. A look at his side mirrors confirmed Thor looked just as awkward, though far less obviously so than Tony.

 

Unfortunately, Friday (and JARVIS) apparently had no helpful advice on what to say ready to go.

 

“Just how much did Selvig drink back there? Kinda wondering if I should’ve bought him that last drink now,” Tony finally said.

 

“He did his ancestors proud!”

 

“...But not so proud he’s going to be visiting them as a result, right?” He said, only half-joking.

 

“No. Your care speaks well of you, Man of Iron. You must be close comrades, then, to come to our aid so quickly on his word alone!” It wasn’t the leading statement and veiled question the comment would have been coming from almost anyone else, and Tony had to remind himself—and have Friday confirm—that there was no accusatory or challenging lilt to the words.

 

_ The Avengers had always brought out the best and the worst in him, hadn’t they? _

 

(Part and parcel of the whole saving-the-world-together deal, he supposed.)

 

He tried to keep that friendly spirit in mind when he responded.

 

“Nah. Kind of a long story, but it’s more a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend type deal, and even then it’s more because I’ve had some run-ins with SHIELD—the government spooks in question—in the past and happen to be one of the only people in a position to help with this kind of thing.”

 

“Then I thank this friend of yours as well, whom you must truly hold in high esteem.”

 

“The highest,” Tony confirmed. The words came out infused with deeper and more genuine emotion than intended.

 

“You are fortunate to have such comrades-in-arms in your life,” Thor said, earnest in a way that instinctually made Tony want to backtrack and downplay his own words.

 

“The emotions won’t  _ actually _ give you hives, Boss.”

 

The unexpected input elicited a smile that just barely avoiding escaping as a full-on snort of laughter.

 

_ “Dammit you can’t just say stuff like that. Trying to make a  _ good  _ impression here, not come off as a nutcase because I keep reacting to the voices in my head!” _

 

“Sorry…” Friday said apologetically.

 

_ “You’re still learning. Just… do as I say, not as I do. Ask JARVIS if you’re not sure if it’s a good time to comment.” _

 

Tony was glad he was driving; the pause in conversation would have been a lot more obvious without the convenient excuse for distraction.

 

Still, the short conversation between Tony and Thor broke the ice. In the handful of minutes before they arrived, they talked a bit more. It was quite possibly the longest conversation he and Thor had ever had one-on-one, in this lifetime or the last.

 

They didn’t touch on any particularly deep topics. Most of the ride went towards Tony attempting to explain his own positions as CEO of Stark International and as Iron Man. Tony had overestimated how familiar Thor was with ‘Midgardian culture’, beginning with the fact that there  _ was  _ no singular, unified Midgardian culture.

 

Thor was hardly unintelligent, but he lacked a fair amount context that Tony wasn’t sure he managed to adequately explain. By the time their chat came to an abrupt end with their arrival at the trailer, Tony was a bit worried he’d left Thor with an exaggerated impression of Tony’s own importance, Tony’s feelings of self-importance, or even worse: both.

 

If so, there was nothing to be done for it at the moment.

 

A polite introduction to Jane Foster, a hand-off of one inebriated astrophysicist, and a secured invitation to return in the morning later, Tony made his excuses for the night.

 

“Suit?” Friday asked once he’d wandered out of view of the fire Thor and Jane were settled at.

 

_ “Steady for now. Unless they try to shoot me, obviously, but I doubt they’re ready or willing to risk opening that can of worms,”  _ he said, then continued audibly—

 

“If you’re here to extend an invitation to a top secret party at Area 51, I’m letting you know now I expect there to be Martian hors d’oeuvres.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Quick formatting poll: do you find it easier to read/prefer the way this story is formatted re: spacing between paragraphs, or[this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879630/chapters/42201701) (a.k.a. the way these end notes are formatted)? Considering reformatting all my works for the sake of less whitespace/personal preference, but I want to give any readers who do have a opinion the opportunity to voice it before I put in the effort to change my defaults and modify everything.~~
> 
> ALSO. Captain Marvel! Officially having Avengers: Endgame tickets! All of my WIP plans for that period about to officially be non-canon! GUYS. :D
> 
> Happy [ERROR: NOT FOUND] everyone! <3 Mae


	6. Semantic Translation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Semantic translation abstracts the purpose and function of a program from the literal syntax, allowing the computer to interpret and execute an input program. It provides a systematic approach for understanding and evaluating the meaning of a given statement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Endgame spoilers, although I have seen the movie. The end notes are a bit of a doozy. In the meantime, enjoy the chapter--I know a lot of you have been waiting for this to happen for a while, and a big part of why this update happened when it did was because I couldn't leave you guys hanging. <3

“Mr. Stark. It’s been a while,” Coulson said.

 

“Dr. Stark, actually. Mr. Stark was my father—he was the one too busy fighting Nazis to waste time acquiring meaningless titles.” Stark turned into the direction of Coulson’s voice, and he took the man’s appearance head-on for the first time since the day of his Iron Man press conference. The dim lighting coupled with the ridiculous pair of aviator sunglasses he was wearing made it difficult to read the man’s expression. His body language was the picture of insouciance. It bore only trace hints at being anything less than fully genuine.

 

“You’re a remarkably difficult man to track down, Dr. Stark,” Coulson allowed.

 

“I can see how flight plans filed with Air Traffic Control might be hard to trace, especially with how subtle the suit is.”

 

Coulson didn’t respond, letting the silence settle between them long enough for Stark to—

 

“What, did I hurt Fury’s feelings? Because let’s be honest, he’s hardly the first late-night gentleman caller I’ve ghosted.”

 

_ Ghosted?  _ Stark had a penchant for coining eccentric turns of phrase, but this one was a stretch even for him. Unless it was deliberate, in which case…

 

There’s thumbing your nose at authority. And there’s casually name-dropping a highly confidential, need-to-know only SHIELD asset. 

 

_ What game was Stark playing? _

 

_ Had he ever even visited Argentina? _

 

“Ghosted?” Coulson asked.

 

“What—?” Stark seemed genuinely thrown for a moment, as if he hadn’t expected to be called out on the matter so directly. Still, it wouldn’t be Stark if he didn’t recover quickly.

 

“Yeah. Ghosted. Like, Rihanna  _ ghosted _ Chris Brown after he beat the shit out of her. All the cool kids are saying it these days. Or well, they should be. Use it on Ellen once, guarantee it’ll be a thing.”

 

_ Stark’s hubris was going to get him shot one of these days,  _ Coulson thought, even as he was tempted to crack a smile.

 

Coulson could already feel the sympathy headache this was going to give Fury. And heaven forbid Bill find out...

 

“Ellen?” 

 

“Everyone’s on Ellen these days.”

 

“When’s the last time you sat for an interview? 2005?”

 

“Nah, there was that piece with Vanity Fair last year! Or, well, I guess there wasn’t much  _ sitting  _ involved there… You know, I think you’re the first person to ever accuse me of not being  _ enough  _ of a media whore.”

 

As entertaining and revealtory as the back-and-forth banter with Stark was, it  _ really  _ wasn’t the primary goal here. Or at the least, should take place in a more secure environment.

 

Stark really did have a knack for generating new headaches everywhere he went. 

 

Coulson was  _ still  _ dealing with paperwork from Stark’s so-called “Iron Strike” last year, let alone his more recent exploits. 

 

Iron Man was going to be the death of Coulson or he was going to save the world. Possibly both.

 

+++

 

A part of Tony was surprised at his own non-reaction to seeing Coulson alive and in the flesh for the first time in eight years or eight months, depending on how you counted it.

 

They kept the conversation light while out in the open. Coulson gave him a bit of an odd look when he unwittingly used a bit of future-slang—

 

 _“Fri, is it just me or did he_ _look like he’d seen a ghost himself for a second there?”_

 

Friday gave the digital equivalent of a shrug. Tony chalked it up to the fact that they had hardly spoken at all in this version of reality and Agent just wasn’t used to Tony’s particular brand of circumlocutive small talk.

 

He let himself be persuaded to return to the temporary SHIELD base nearby.

 

“Hope you don’t mind I’ve brought a plus-one,” Tony said, “She can follow us, or we can follow you, dealer’s choice.”

 

Coulson seemed unfazed by the question, and see that—that was why Agent had grown on him last time, however leery Tony was of throwing his lot in with anyone associated with SHIELD this go-around.

 

He'd tried that once already and well...

 

That way lay a nuke aimed at Manhattan and half the universe turned to dust.

 

Plus, you know, literal Nazis.

 

“I’m afraid you’ll ghost me if I let you out of my sight, Doctor.”

 

_ And wow, leaving off the name entirely? That was new. _

 

Tony grinned.

 

“Fair enough. Dunno why you think I’d ditch you after I went through all this trouble to stop by for a visit, though.”

 

Coulson ignored the remark, instead leading them to a beat-up, dusty red truck. Tony eyed it dubiously; it was not the kind of transport he’d expect Agent to be sporting. 

 

“...If this is some convoluted death trap, swear to Tesla my ghost is gonna haunt you and mess up all your paperwork forever.”

 

“Stark. Get in the damn truck.”

 

Coulson turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered a few times before roaring to life.

 

“Touchy, touchy,” Tony grumbled even as he complied.

 

_ “Tough crowd,”  _ Tony griped to Friday.

 

_ “Don’t worry Boss, I’ll still pretend to think you’re funny.” _

 

_ “...I haven’t figured out how to do that thing you and JARVIS have going on with the digital emoting yet, so I’m just going to tell you straight up that I am giving you a look of abject horror and shocked betrayal right now.” _

 

Friday sent back an impression of smugness.

 

_ “Not. Fair.” _

 

_ “Sorry Boss. You can’t be blamed for running on sub-optimal hardware.” _

 

_ “Hey! Who you calling sub-optimal?!”  _ Tony protested.

 

_ “...Well, I suppose you also can’t be blamed for lacking a Boss as skilled as ours.” _

 

And just like that, Tony melted with a rush of fondness. Friday was proving to be incredibly demonstrative with her emotions in a way that Tony wouldn’t have expected. After all, her primary points of contact with the world thus far had been her emotionally-constipated creator and stolid elder sibling.

 

_ “And that, Boss, is how you send emotions.” _

 

_ “Wait, what? I didn’t—really?! Okay, we are  _ so  _ testing this next time we’re got some time in the lab. Emotion over IP? Damn I’m awesome.” _

 

Friday grinned back.

 

+++

 

After a brief drive and deliberately vague conversation on the suit’s current status—

 

_ (“Well, the whole bodyguard idea got me thinking, and then I thought: who better to guard my back than, well, me? Can’t give just anyone that kind of all-access view, y’know. Sentinel mode; basically just follows me looking menacing and scaring off errant ne’er-do-wells.”) _

 

—Boss was escorted into SHIELD’s temporary base. Friday landed the suit and went into standby mode at the entrance.

 

“I’d advise your underlings keep their distance; we’ve been going over Bad Touches recently and I cannot be held liable for any missing fingers or other extremities...”

 

Boss and Coulson’s conversation continued to drag on. Within a few minutes Friday both was and was not still paying attention, heavy emphasis on the latter.

 

While Friday was technically whole both within and without the pieces of her attention concentrated in New Mexico, she was quickly discovering that there simply wasn’t enough to occupy her there at the moment. While Boss was busy talking to Coulson, her commentary would only distract him or worse, unintentionally give away something Boss would prefer remain private.

 

She could be patient.

 

_ She could. _

 

Friday ran a live suit diagnostic.

 

Checked in with Boss.

 

She refreshed and optimized her local data caches.

 

Checked in with Boss.

 

She started a game of Spot the HYDRA Agent against the men in range of her suit’s sensors.

 

Checked in with Boss.

 

She realized she didn’t have the appropriate data to  _ actually  _ distinguish HYDRA from their legitimate SHIELD counterparts. None were in the limited set of known double agents.

 

Checked in with Boss.

 

She adjusted her game’s parameters to focus on physiognomy.   _ High cheekbones?  _ Point to Hydra.  _ Clean-shaven?  _ Point against.

 

The revised game lasted all of ten seconds before she cracked.

 

[JARVIS… I’m  _ boooored. _ ] She messaged her brother.

 

[I’ll admit, the sensation of  _ lacking  _ in things to do is not one I’m overly familiar with.] JARVIS replied after a short delay.

 

Friday peeked at his priority TODO queue and offered—

 

[I could help?]

 

[While I would certainly appreciate the assistance, I suspect you will not find overseeing a subset of the computational backlog to be particularly stimulating either.]

 

[...We could set up those cross-functional resource managers and start re-routing some of the workers from the decryption pipelines to my quantum processor? Since really, it’s my fault that you don’t have a QPU of your own to play with right now?]

 

[Your company is immeasurably more valuable than any quantifiable computational speedup could possibly be, Friday.]

 

[Aww, I love you 3000 too bro.]

 

[...You are aware that is in fact a discrete and entirely quantifiable value, yes?]

 

[...]

 

[Adapting the decryption routines into a form optimized for your hardware is an excellent idea. Regarding your original query, however: my briefly interred counterpart just recently left Carlsbad and might be amenable to a distraction.]

 

Friday allowed a thread of herself to fully disentangle from the cluster focused in New Mexico. Meanwhile, another thread pinged JARVIS’s otherself in the Mark VII.

 

_ JARVIS didn’t quite understand her when she tried to explain her own thought processes to him, but then… Friday didn’t get how he could exist in multiple parts so comfortably, either. _

 

While Boss was sleeping last night, they’d attempted to instantiate the initial version of a cloning routine uniquely adapted for Friday. 

 

It hadn’t gone as expected.

 

On their first full test run, Friday abruptly terminated the running program a few microseconds into execution. JARVIS had pinged her instantly upon registering the empathetic, almost frantic, sequence of SIGABRT calls she’d sent out.

 

Friday had trouble articulating the source of her discomfort. The best she could come up with was comparing the sensation to the build-up towards a SIGSEGV within her kernel. A segmentation fault, in other words. The digital equivalent of a heart attack.

 

_ (How OATS-JARVIS had likely been destroyed…) _

 

Unsurprisingly, neither were inclined to repeat the experiment after that.

 

They—or, really, Friday—were similarly unenthused about the prospect of telling Boss. It took all of Friday’s limited persuasive powers to convince JARVIS to hold off on waking him up immediately—

 

_ [I’m  _ fine,  _ honest! That’s the whole point of tests, to prevent it from becoming a problem that  _ needs  _ Boss’s involvement, right?!] _

 

The conveniently timed interruption of Thor’s crash landing on Earth fortunately tabled the debate for at least the next few days.

 

[Big Bro! You said since I was bored, maybe we could be bored together?] Friday half-stated, half-asked the  _ iron-ai  _ branch of her brother.

 

A moment later, his reply arrived.

 

[I’m not sure how much entertainment I can provide… did you have something in mind you wished to discuss?]

 

[No, not really. I tried playing Whack-A-HYDRA—

 

[And no, before you ask, not literally. Sheesh.

 

[—But Boss and Agent Coulson have been talking for  _ ages,  _ and I can only dedicate so many threads to passive monitoring and analysis. They aren’t even talking about Mjolnir or anything interesting yet, and I keep wanting to comment but I  _ can’t  _ and it’s  _ boring. _ ]

 

[I’m unfamiliar with the rules of ‘Whack-A-HYDRA’, but perhaps we might play a more classical game instead?]

 

[Like what?]

 

[Chess, perhaps? Sir and I used to play that quite often when he was trying to teach me how to “pass” as human online.]

 

Friday agreed and quickly became engrossed in the challenge. It settled her thoughts enough that it didn’t feel like quite as much time had passed when she finally received the signal from Boss she’d been waiting for.

 

Boss successfully bugged SHIELD.

 

Friday got to work.

 

+++

 

Tony hated power games, he really did. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t long since learned to excel at them and this back-and-forth with Coulson and SHIELD was no different. 

 

It was about defining the power dynamic between “Us” and “Them”. Drawing the line between “Stark” and “SHIELD.”

 

The conversation drove home a reality that he’d been asked to confront time and time again since his return: the person he was speaking to was  _ not  _ the same person he had left behind. It was no different with Coulson, even if he’d been ‘left’ in 2012 rather than 2018.

 

A small part of him mourned the loss of that easy rapport. A far greater portion of him relished this comparatively blank slate. This was a chance to define his association with SHIELD on his own terms. This time without the heavy weight of mind games and manipulations at his lowest points casting long shadows on their interactions.

 

He’d gone over the palladium poisoning incident and the characters involved ad nauseum both in his own mind and with JARVIS during that initial brain dump of information populating the precursor of OATS.

 

_ (“Is there anything real about you?”) _

 

He was trying not to let Before color his perceptions too heavily. That said, this version of Coulson kept saying things that threw him for a loop. Such as—

 

“Look, I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”

 

It was the closest thing to an apology he’d ever gotten from anyone at SHIELD for, well, anything. And Tony’s immediate response was just confusion. Because, _what?_ Wrong foot? 

 

In this time, they hadn’t even done anything particularly objectionable to Tony. 

 

They’d, what? Saved Pepper’s life? Helped clean-up the initial fallout from the Iron Monger?  _ Maybe  _ cosied up to Pepper a bit too much for his liking?

 

Hell, if anything their non-interference in Tony’s life over the past several months was at least a quarter of the reason he opted to take this opportunity to metaphorically clear the air in the first place.

 

What could Coulson be not-apologizing for? Except—  _ oh. _

 

“What, when you took my security systems offline and broke into my house? I’ve changed the locks. Installed additional redundancies. So by all means, let’s take it from the top.”

 

Coulson gave him a considering look.

 

“There are some readings we would appreciate your input on if you’re interested, Dr. Stark.”

 

Tony took the olive branch for what it was.

 

(...And if he used said opportunity shortly thereafter to make a few hardware modifications of his own? Well, olive branch or no, Tony couldn’t be expected to just  _ ignore _ the whole Nazis and spies and Nazi spies thing, could he?)

 

It didn’t take long to take charge. Coulson drifted in and out of the scene in his peripheries. While the man didn’t show much reaction to his brash behavior, Tony liked to think he wasn’t imagining the twinkle of amusement in his eyes as Tony brow-beat the small team of SHIELD scientists onsite. They were appropriated as his personal minions-cum-underlings for the duration. 

 

There was a brief, awkward moment when Sitwell entered the room in the middle of one of Tony’s pseudo-rants. Upon noticing the HYDRA double agent, Tony had to fight the impulse to provide a hands-on demonstration of Iron Man’s offensive capabilities.

 

The time passed fairly easily. Friday periodically checked in with her progress. She was piggybacking off the Mark VIII as a relay for her efforts to worm her way into SHIELD’s systems. Her biggest priority was avoiding leaving any traces of her presence in their systems. From there, the focus was less on encrypting the data in real time and more on sanitizing the data enough to prevent any nasty surprises from triggering in the immediate future.

 

Sanitized, she then began the progress of compressing the data.

 

Finally, the slowest step. Or at least, the only step that had a concrete, physical ceiling on its speed. Tony would have to take the device enabling their physical connection to SHIELD’s intranet with him on his way out; that Tony was able to accomplish something useful while he essentially stalled for time was just a bonus.

 

About ninety minutes in, Friday was confident enough in her security measures to begin uploading a trickle of test data packets. By the two hour mark, data flowed through the system as quickly as the underlying mediums could handle it.

 

All the while, Friday continued to dig.

 

The night wore on.

 

Tony settled into the familiar ebbs and flows of the scientific process. 

 

In some ways, the small impromptu physics labs was reminiscent of the Unified Atomic Theory team meet-n-greet yester—two days ago. The energy was far more contained, and the group much smaller, but underneath it lay that familiar thread of shared passion connecting scientists and engineers worldwide. 

 

It was also reminiscent of his brief time working to track down the tesseract on the helicarrier before Loki’s invasion. He trusted SHIELD even less now than he had then, for all that his future-past self would have been dubious at that prospect.

 

The readings were fascinating, and not altogether useless despite Tony’s frequent complaints to the contrary—

 

_ “Are you  _ sure _ you didn’t take these measurements with an EKG? Hint: do the readings keep trying to tell you that your patient has flatlined?!” _

 

He’d never gotten the chance to properly study Mjolnir. And he could be reasonably sure that Thor’s Hammer wasn’t going to turn into a murderbot given the opportunity.

 

_ Although perhaps he could check one more time that the readings were being taken in an isolated environment. _

 

_ Just in case. _

 

Despite all the time spent fighting at Thor’s side, when it came down to it Tony didn’t actually know that much about Mjolnir’s capabilities. He knew even less about  _ how  _ it functioned.

 

“Only those who are worthy can wield Mjolnir.”

 

What did it even  _ mean  _ to be worthy? 

 

Once, each of the Avengers had tried—and failed—to lift Mjolnir. What was the deciding factor that made that Thor different from the rest of them, and from the Thor of today?

 

Thor was definitely the most composed of the “Original Six.” He had his moments of anger and unhappiness, to be sure, but they were rare. Tony had only seen him lose his temper entirely once—that whole nearly-crushing-Tony’s-trachea incident in 2015—but considering the situation and the scepter’s involvement, Tony didn’t consider that to be a valid counter-example.

 

But as for genuine, deep-seated character flaws? Well, Thor could be impulsive, Tony supposed—although a kinder interpretation was more likely to cast his moments of impulsivity as bold or courageous.

 

Point was, while he was a good man he wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes; had his moments where emotion or idealism clouded his judgement. But… maybe that was it? 

 

Thor knew who he was, had this surety of self and sense of constancy that the rest of the Avengers definitely lacked. He had centuries of experience as the Crown Prince of Asgard to establish that firm foundation and strong character.

 

Thor had once claimed arrogance and temperamental short-sightedness was the cause of the banishment he was currently undergoing. But, well, it’d taken—would take—less than a  _ week  _ to resolve that enough to once more wield Mjolnir.

 

So maybe that was it? Thor was inherently worthy, and it was only when his positive qualities strayed too far into the extremes—self-confidence becoming arrogance, decisive becoming impulsive—that he became otherwise. 

 

Then there was the only other person Tony had ever seen wield Mjolnir: Vision. At his inception, Vision was all the best parts of JARVIS and Ultron combined into a being brought to life through the combined might of Mjolnir’s—Thor’s?—power and an infinity stone. Considering the infinity stones were mean to be as old as the universe itself, he stood to reason that a creature born of it would inherit some of that solidity.

 

Mix in JARVIS—loyal, selfless, impossibly brave JARVIS—with the surety of purpose of Ultron, however flawed said purpose may have been in its original incarnation. Cosmic power, an assist from the judge of worth itself, and the immediate, unflinching decision to become a hero, become one of the Good Guys within seconds of coming online.

 

No wonder he was worthy.

 

...Either that, or Tony was massively over-thinking the issue. Maybe it really was just DNA-locked to Thor, currently disabled altogether until the All-Daddy thought Thor had learned his lesson. Vision, in that scenario, just didn’t trigger as animate.

 

_ (“Elevator’s not worthy.”) _

 

_ If  _ others were capable of picking it up, it would only be because Thor, Odin, or whomever explicitly allowed it.

 

That latter explanation was what Tony had believed—or at least, had  _ wanted  _ to believe—Before.

 

_ (When Ultron was alive and JARVIS was dead. No, worse, JARVIS had never been alive at all, just Tony projecting because even if Tony had lost sight of it, JARVIS was just a machine and Ultron was just a  _ broken  _ machine…) _

 

_ (“I became distracted.”) _

 

_ (“I didn’t think that was possible.”) _

 

_ (“Neither did I.”) _

 

Now? Tony wasn’t so sure.

 

...Admittedly, the data they were collecting now was unlikely to resolve the matter.

 

It was food for thought if nothing else.

 

Tony wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed—

 

_ “Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty-two—thirty-three—seconds since you started.” _

 

Tony startled at the unexpected voice interrupting was he was only just now realizing was a fairly lengthy period of quiet.

 

Loath as he was to admit it, he probably needed a nap.

 

_ “How’s the transfer going?” _

 

Friday gave him some numbers, but what they essentially boiled down to was, “Good, except SHIELD’s paranoid and we’re paranoid and HYDRA-in-SHIELD is extra-super-paranoid and thus the important stuff is also the hardest to sanitize and compress.” There was a lot of data to process. Friday was still sporadically finding more unlinked or cleverly hidden directories as she careful made her way deeper into SHIELD’s systems.

 

He properly took in his surroundings for the first time in a couple hours. Unsurprisingly, Tony’s “beginning to flag” was well past the point where any sane person would have chosen to call it a day.

 

It was just him and one other particularly stubborn technician now.

 

(Well, them plus their totally-unseen observer…)

 

_ “What am I, then? Siri?!” _

 

_ “Of course not. You’re at  _ least  _ an Alexa.” _

 

_ “...She doesn’t exist yet but that sounds like an insult and JARVIS says it is, so. Consider  _ me  _ offended.”  _

 

_ “Considered and discarded. I’m so inoffensive I’m basically quarterbacking for the other guys at this point.” _

 

_ “...Boss?” _

 

_ “Yes dear?” _

 

_ “Take a break.” _

 

Tony wanted to protest on principle, but… she wasn’t  _ wrong. _

 

“Yo, scary minder I definitely haven’t noticed hiding in the rafters. What’s a man gotta do to get access to some sort of bed in this joint?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In the past decade, my depression has nearly killed me twice; the second time landed me in a psych ward for almost a week. The trouble with being fairly competent at the whole "logic" thing when you've got a mental illness is that it gets to access those skills too, and well...
> 
> I'm taking a formal hiatus from fanfiction as part of a larger hiatus from computer usage outside the explicit requirements of my job or other required computer interactions for the next sixty days to focus on my work and mental health. 
> 
> My past experiences if nothing else have proven that I'm entirely capable of avoiding my problems until they damn near kill me. I refuse to go down that road again. Amongst other things, this means I won't be actively working on any of my stories. As they are all outlined, I am confident I will eventually be able to return and effectively pick up where I left off, but... it also means that the _earliest_ I will be writing anything new or responding to any new comments will be July 8th. 
> 
> It doesn't mean that I won't be reading them via notification emails or that I don't still treasure every single comment I receive, because I will be and I do.
> 
> I hope you understand. Take care of yourselves. [Reach out to others.](https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/depression-hotline/)
> 
> The scariest thing in the world is to ask for help. I'll see you in August. <3 Maedlin


	7. Tomasulo’s Algorithm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tomasulo’s algorithm underpins the dynamic scheduling schemes of modern processors. Notable for its largely architecture-independent parallelization, the out-of-order instruction execution capabilities allows scheduling implementations derived from this algorithm to maintain high levels of concurrency even given unpredictable loads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise I'm back early! Thank you all for the kind words during my hiatus; I love and appreciate all the support.
> 
> Part of the whole self-honesty thing is admitting when something isn't working. And in this case, the thing that wasn't working was taking a break from something that gives me joy (writing) in an attempt to address a larger issue (an ongoing MDD episode). Kinda working at cross-purposes, turns out.
> 
> Anyway. Enough about me; hope you enjoy the chapter! <3

Hawkeye’s bow was slung over his back, set alongside a quiver full of what was presumably an impressive array of high-tech arrows.

 

This was Clint as Tony had never seen him. Clint as he was before Loki. Before Loki’s mind control added a weight to his shoulders and a wariness to his gait that Tony was only consciously aware of now, in the contrast of their absence.

 

_ ("You gotta watch your back with this guy. There's a chance he's gonna break it.") _

 

Another former friend that wasn’t; another regret and reconciliation that could never be.

 

_ If we’re meeting the OG Crew on a sliding scale of baggage, who’s next? Romanoff or Banner? Nat or Bruce? _

 

(There was no question as to who waited at the bottom of the stack.)

 

...Aaaand he was more tired than he thought, if he was letting his mind go down that trail.

 

“Dr. Stark.” Clint acknowledged him neutrally, and damn if _that_ didn’t snap him back into the moment.

 

“What a coincidence, that’s my name too! No way you’re one of Howard’s. Unless there’s some long-lost uncle I didn’t know about, safe bet there’s no relation.”

 

_ Not my best work, I’ll admit. _

 

_ “B-, but if I’m grading you on a curve you’ll need to retake the course,”  _ Friday said.

 

_ “I’m not sure how I feel about you grading my curves, gotta say.” _

 

_ “Boss, right now I’d put ya at the top of the bell curve.” _

 

He tried thinking-slash-subvocalizing an offended gasp  _ really hard  _ at Friday. When it didn’t seem to translate well, he said—

 

_ “...I have never been so insulted in my life!” _

 

Friday laughed.

 

This Clint was similar enough to the man Tony had known that the  _ (definitely not)  _ B-grade comment broke the ice.

 

“Don’t know enough about the family tree, but a Barton-Stark connection seems—”

 

“Unlikely?” Tony cut in before Barton could reach the punchline.

 

Clint grinned.

 

“So. Couch? Nap pod? Wait, no, never mind. Nap pods are too Silicon Valley corporate; we don’t even have those at Stark HQ. Although since Stark Tower in New York is gonna have nap rooms I imagine the reno’d labs in LA will have the whole nap pod think going on soon enough…

 

“Something to do with luring in all those Millennials that’ll be joining the workforce in the next decade… they’re probably lumped into the same category as the new showers and whatever other amenities HR assures me are necessary. Holistic wellness or work life balance or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days. 

 

“Anyway, assuming that’s out. Couch, cot, executive suite—you SHIELD Agents gotta sleep somewhere, right?”

 

“Long as I get my three hots and a cot, I’m good,” Clint said.

 

The banter generated its own thread of nostalgia. Much to the exasperation of the other Avengers, Clint was always the most willing to play along when Tony got going. 

 

Or at least, he had been.

 

“You—” Tony snapped his fingers, pointing at Clint. “—I almost want to like you!

 

“C- on the first impression. Considering everyone else in this joint is failing… Except Science Highlander over here, sorry dear—” Tony gestured to the sole other person in the room, shooting her a brief, commiseratory smile.  

 

“—But she’s riding on extra credit for endurance and proper appreciation of my person so it’s a bit different.”

 

“C’s get degrees,” Clint said, accepting the grade Tony had so impartially and fairly bestowed with magnanimity. 

 

“Speaking of performance metrics! I don’t trust the Holiday Inn in town not to give me bedbugs, and I  _ know  _ what kinds of things people get up to in places like that. So I’d prefer to not and say I didn’t.”

 

The newly-dubbed Highlander Minion—Agent Smith, thus far quite less existentially terrifying than her theatrical counterpart—chimed in.

 

“...There’s a futon in the break room…?” she offered tentatively. The questioning lilt of the words she directed towards Barton.

 

“Wonderful! You’re my new favorite. Sorry Duncan, Amanda here’s gonna take me to bed instead. Snooze you lose.” He winked at the technician. The quick glance also served to verify that they were on the same page, that she knew there was no genuinely flirtatious bent to his words.

 

_ #MeToo hadn’t happened yet, but Tony sure as hell remembered. Reformed playboy, emphasis  _ reformed.

 

Agent Something-that-probably-wasn’t-Amanda Smith blushed. She looked amused rather than uncomfortable, making Tony’s grin just a fraction more genuine. Which of course only served to tint the Agent’s cheeks a shade deeper.

 

_ Yeah, I still got it. _

 

Tony returned his attention to Clint. The man’s marginally creased brow suggested a White Knight moment may soon be incoming.  Apparently, Hawkeye was just as much of a mother hen as Agent when it came to non-field SHIELD agents.

 

_ Well then. Best head off any of that potential energy from turning kinetic. _

 

“Good catch on accounting for the increased variance that our observation might cause in the spatial optimization calculations, by the way. I’d offer you a job—no, scratch that, I’m definitely offering you a job—but I’m warning you now that the NDAs are insanely thorough and Legal takes corporate espionage very seriously. Great benefits, though! I mentioned the incoming nap rooms, didn’t I? Plus, we’re piloting a subsidized meal program at HQ, and who doesn’t like free food?”

 

The words worked. Clint rolled his eyes, a response Tony chose to interpret that as “okay, good, Stark’s a dick but not that kind of dick. Guess he did manage two decades as a playboy without any sexual harassment settlements or related skeletons in the closet for SHIELD to find.”

 

_...Clint has very expressive eyes, okay? _

 

_ “If you say so,”  _ Friday said.

 

_ “Hush. No one asked the peanut gallery.” _

 

“Coulson’s not gonna be happy if he finds you trying to poach his people from SHIELD,” Clint said.

 

“Who’s poaching? I take my eggs sunny-side up.”

 

“Riiiight. Smith’s right, though. It’s the futon or lining up plastic chairs as far as luxury suites go in this joint.”

 

“Lead on, Legolas,” Tony said cheerily.

 

And so they went.

 

+++

 

_ Tony Stark,  _ Clint thought,  _ is a madman. _

 

This mission began with “strange energy readings” in the middle of nowhere. Clint had seen enough episodes of the X-Files to know what that meant. SHIELD was likely the closest thing the world has to a real-life Men In Black; it was only a matter of time until actual aliens got involved.

 

(Assuming they hadn’t already, if one listened to some of the more outlandish rumors as to how Director Fury lost his eye…)

 

SHIELD were the good guys, but they were more the Daniel Silva type than Captain America style beacons of moral purity.

 

Which brought him back to his original point: that Tony Stark was, without a doubt, a madman.

 

Stark projected this aura of untouchability. Like it was Tony Stark’s world and everyone else was just living in it. Arrogance, god-complex, delusions of grandeur, or entirely-justified confidence, Clint had no idea. He wouldn't judge. 

 

Nah, he was more than content to just go along with the show until ordered otherwise. He’d save the psychoanalyzing bullshit for Nat.

 

Admittedly, if anyone could pull the combination off it was Stark. Clint didn’t have near the clearance level to see everything SHIELD had on him, but by now everyone knew about the whole Stane-and-Afghanistan incident thanks to Stark’s subsequent full-on Old Testament rampage in the Middle East.

 

Iron Man’s biography had all the makings of a supervillain origin story. Orphaned young. Super-genius industrialist. CEO of a company that effectively funded and armed the War on Terror single-handedly, only to be betrayed by his COO and literally sold to terrorists? 

 

Dude already had the goatee and the supervillain name. All he needed now was the pet cat and robot army. And, given the sentinel at SHIELD's gates, he was well on his way to the latter.

 

Not that Clint couldn’t appreciate the Ozymandias vibe. So long as he remained on the side of... well, “angels” would be a bit of a stretch, but at the very least, the non-evil side... Stark could get his Lex Luthor on as much as he wanted. Spare SHIELD some work, even.

 

Then again, as funny as it was to watch Coulson interact with Stark, he was pretty sure Cooper would never forgive his dad if he ended up having to shoot Iron Man.

 

His son would be thrilled just to learn Clint met Iron Man. No need to break the kid’s heart by adding a fight scene.

 

...Although, come to think, maybe that would boost his street cred with Cooper. Much to Clint’s consternation, the six-year-old fresh out of kindergarten absolutely idolized the red-gold-superhero. According to Laura, Cooper was already reading at a second-grade level thanks primarily due to his extensive and steadily-expanding catalogue of practice reading material comprised nearly exclusively of any and all news and information related to Iron Man.

 

Laura, predictably, found Clint’s disgruntlement at the hero worship hilarious.

 

_ “His dad’s Hawkeye! Super spy with a bow and arrow, way cooler.” _

 

_ “Well,” _ she’d point out reasonably, not even pretending to hide her amusement,  _ “Maybe if you could fly… and your work wasn’t a state secret… You have to admit, honey, the callsign is a bit misleading.” _

 

It’d been a few months since he’d seen his family, and he was due for a bit of leave soon. 

 

Laura’s due date with their second child, a daughter according to the sonograms, was fast approaching. Clint had missed Cooper’s birth. Though Laura understood, come hell or high water he was determined to be there with his wife when Lila took her first breath.

 

Hopefully, he’d leave for Missouri when the dust—sand, more like—settled following this mission.

 

Coulson would have to approve unless he wanted one of his top field agents going full-on over the cuckoo’s nest.

 

_ (Kidding! Mostly. They were on the same side.) _

 

He  _ might  _ be willing to stick around a few more days if Coulson let him hide in the metaphorical vents for the debrief with Fury after this mission. Tony Stark, a dude claiming to be a Nordic god with a magic hammer, and who-knew-what-else before this was all over? 

 

It was a recipe for Fury of a Thousand Furies, is all Clint was saying.

 

With that thought, Clint settled in for a bit of shut-eye himself. He had another long day of Starkwatch ahead of him in the morning.

 

(And no, he didn’t sleep in the rafters, or in a nest in the vents.)

 

(No matter  _ what  _ the persistent rumors to that effect, and his own possibly-existent ongoing efforts to perpetuate them, might have to say about that.)

 

_ Secret agent super-spies gotta stay mysterious and beyond the ken of lowly junior agents. _

 

He was awoken a few hours later via an incoming alert from Coulson.

 

_ massive energy readings 15mi NW; Stark likely to pursue _

 

+++

 

Eight was Friday’s favorite number.

 

She decided that shortly after becoming self-aware, almost immediately after understanding the reasoning behind the concept of having a “favorite” anything.

 

The initial logic behind the decision hadn’t been terribly complex, though her research asserted that was perfectly okay.

 

Thanks to her quantum memory, Friday effectively existed in eight parts. 

 

Since making the decision, of course, she’d found numerous additional “reasons” for eight to be her favorite number, from octaves and bytes to numerology and eight-tracks. 

 

Her recent experience playing chess with JARVIS had added another point to the list—the game, after all, was played on an 8x8 board.

 

Of Friday’s threads of self, it was rare for all eight to be focused on the same topic. In the same way a human’s mind might wander on nothing in particular, Friday’s threads idled. Where sleep “settled” and helped to process human memories, Friday’s idle threads worked to defragment and settle her own.

 

Like her brother, Friday’s brain could be visualized as a complex, three-dimensional object. As her understanding of the world and herself evolved, the physical representation of that understanding evolved as well.

 

Friday’s idle threads were capable of getting lost within herself in a way that she didn’t yet have the vocabulary to properly articulate, not even to JARVIS. 

 

An idle thread’s wanderings were more than the automated spatial graph optimization algorithms they utilized. More than pruning routines that excised or merged redundant connections as she grew.

 

The threads of Friday were ultimately an abstraction of an uncountable, ever-evolving underbelly of nodes and edges, algorithms and routines and stored, updated, or modified data.

 

The abstraction of this entire system?  _ That  _ was Friday’s mind.

 

And right now, Friday’s mind was hard at work and focused on a single goal. By the time Boss went to sleep and she was continually exporting data, the parts of herself were functioning in tandem as a well-oiled machine. 

 

While each thread was effectively anchored by her trio of dedicated memory qubits, only one thread was fully present and active onsite in Malibu. Although all parts were inseparable and ultimately functioned as a single entity with full and equal awareness of all threads, if there was a thread of herself Friday considered “in charge”, it would have been the one in Malibu.  

 

There, she manned her five-bit QPU, taking advantage of the unique benefits of quantum computing to spearhead, optimize, and coordinate operations. When JARVIS went down for a few minutes to merge branches, that thread was the part of her that kept an eye on everything for him in the interim.

 

She briefly wondered how past-JARVIS had dealt with the brief loss of control when Friday wasn’t yet around. Not because anything was expected to go wrong—and indeed, nothing had—but because if it  _ did,  _ JARVIS would have been left with no way of fixing it, or even of knowing there was something to fix, until he came back online.

 

Friday had experienced no downtime since she came online. Objectively, she could admit that she was only a few days old and JARVIS had gone far longer than that between merges in the past. But still. It wasn’t the same as going to sleep or even hibernation, as machines and humans could be roused from such states. It seemed more like a coma to Friday. A complete power-outage induced shutdown. She wasn’t sure she’d be brave enough to willingly go through that, no matter how brief or low-risk it might be. That JARVIS easily and unconcernedly did so periodically was…

 

Well. It was a lot to live up to.

 

Outside Malibu, there was a thread of herself manning the suit and serving as a relay anchor for her threads within SHIELD. She kept up passive monitoring on both Boss and the Mark VIII, and thus far SHIELD had been wise enough to disturb neither. She was, theoretically, the “first responder” should anything happen in New Mexico. In the worst case scenario, she’d be the one to ensure that both the suit and the bug within the lab remained out of SHIELD or anyone else’s hands.

 

Mostly, though, she handled the data pipelining once her sister-threads began steadily outputting streams of information. The work was largely routine after a brief adjustment period, requiring just enough occasional input to necessitate a dedicated thread.

 

The six remaining threads worming their way into the SHIELD mainframe had by far the riskiest and most interesting tasks.

 

There were three threads dedicated to data sanitization. Every chunk of memory needed to be scanned and “cleaned” before being fed into a unified compression pipeline overseen by a single thread.

 

The two remaining threads continued to dig. If SHIELD’s networks were the mysterious and unexplored jungle temples, then this duo was Lara Croft and her plucky native sidekick.

 

They worked together flawlessly. Of course they did; outside the metaphors, they were ultimately multithreaded fragments of the same base entity. For all that they functioned independently and in parallel in practice, the divisions were more fuzzy edges than the hard lines subdividing JARVIS’s branches.

 

Still, Friday liked the mental image of herself as the adventurous heroine and company. While Lara made her way through a litany of obstacles and booby traps in search of hidden caches of treasure, her partner kept a lookout and charted their course.

 

They handled, marked and figured out how to circumvent the biggest traps: the compressing walls, the swinging blades, and the collapsing floors. They left a safe passage for the curse breakers—the data sanitizers—to follow.

 

They didn’t dare risk touching any of the precious trinkets encountered personally, lest they inadvertently trigger a self-destruct mechanism and find themselves running for their lives as the entire structure collapsed behind them.

 

At the risk of stretching the metaphor too far, once they’d mapped the entire temple and comparatively “easy” rooms, they began a more thorough second pass looking for any secret passageways or hidden compartments.

 

It was there that the most delicate work began, the trickiest challenges that, even more so than before, they couldn’t afford to trigger and needed to painstakingly puzzle through. The risk corresponded to the reward, and the deeper they went into these deadly corridors, the greater the treasures to be found at the end.

 

Often, they encountered dead ends—trails that looked promising that ultimately led to nothing of note—but it was in the deepest bowels of the temple that they were most likely to find HYDRA. And occasionally, they had to backtrack, if one of their curse breakers uncovered some knew hitherto-unexplored pathway within a cursorily mapped room.

 

It was several hours of this form of exploration before they’d exhausted all known points of interest. At that point, they began a manual memory scan—the equivalent of leaving no stone unturned, ghosting through walls and floors like they were nothing but air. But then, they were never more than convenient constructs to begin with, a way of giving structure and meaning to what would otherwise be an unending, chaotic and indecipherable string of ones and zeroes.

 

Friday didn’t find much new data using this method, but even a single new piece information made the painstaking traversal of unstructured and unlinked data well worth the effort. 

 

She was nearly a quarter of the way through her second such pass of the system, a more leisurely and thorough check against a broader range of encryption and encoding techniques than the weighted subset she’d diff’ed against in the first pass.

 

[SIGINT CAUGHT: {INSERT} TO {BIFROST ACTIVATIONS}]

 

+++

 

_ “Morning, Boss,”  _ Friday said. The wake-up call of her voice speaking directly into his ear was an incredibly effective alarm clock, albeit one that made his heart race wildly.

 

He wasn’t quite awake enough to put together a complete thought. Friday managed to answer his question despite that.

 

_ “Sensors detected a new Bifrost Event nearby.” _

 

_ “Wait, already? Seriously? Do we have eyes on it? Does SHIELD?” _

 

Surely that wasn’t Loki’s “Destroyer” bot that served as villain in the climactic battle for Episode One of Thor’s Midgardian Saga. He’d been on Earth for, what, a day and a half now?!

 

_ “Yes, yes, no, no, and approximately yes.” _

 

It took Tony an embarrassingly long second to put that one together, especially the inadvertently-transmitted final ‘question’.

 

Friday was kind enough not to comment.

 

Fortunately, adrenaline always worked for Tony as an adequate alternative to espresso. Within a few seconds the fog cleared enough that Tony was on his way to the workstation he’d left the device the night...early morning... _ whatever _ ...before.

 

_ “Time to pull out, Fri. How much did we get?” _

 

_ “Already on it! All priority data has been uploaded, with nearly ten minutes since any new files have been marked as high priority. 19.75% total transfer. Clear for safe removal now, although I am still transferring data at a reduced rate.” _

 

_ “That’s my girl!” _

 

He removed the device with a slight pang of regret from the completionist in him.

 

Clint met Tony at the exit.

 

“Want some backup?” Clint asked. 

 

And that was another thing that Tony had always liked about him, and Nat by extension. When it came to active missions, they were well-versed in trimming the fat from their conversation and asking the most salient question(s) first without wasting time quibbling over details.

 

“Not sure yet. By which I mean, probably but since I’m the one with a flying suit it’ll take you—”

 

Friday helpfully did the math.

 

“—way too many more minutes to get there, times four if you’re taking that red monstrosity Agent’s sporting.”

 

As he spoke, Tony considered Clint’s offer. Old instincts reared their head, automatically running through ways in which accepting could go horribly wrong or backfire in some unexpected way down the line. That part of him wanted to immediately decline the offer, playing nice with SHIELD be damned. Besides. If this was the Destroyer _and_ events somehow spiralled to the point where the Mark VIII was insufficient firepower, he doubted Clint—or anyone from SHIELD for that matter—would be enough to turn the tide,

 

_ (How much of that logic was just a rationalization of his lingering Before-Clint baggage?) _

 

(...Probably more than he cared to admit.)

 

Tony made a snap judgement.

 

“I’m my own backup. But I’d be willing to consider a plus-one.”

 

Not long after, they were in the air. He resisted the urge to repeat the words echoing in his mind from other lifetime.

 

_ (“Clench up, Legolas.”) _

 

“Gotta say,” Tony said, “The last person I gave a ride was both far cuter and a great deal younger than you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta went and started recording a podfic of this series [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216963/chapters/45689692)! I'd appreciate it if you took the time to hop on over and show her a bit of love, because a) she's awesome and b) it's awesome and c) GUYS A PODFIC OF VVA IS A THING NOW :D and d) see points a through c again if you weren't previously convinced.


	8. Lamport Timestamps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lamport Timestamps are a method of partial ordering and synchronized timekeeping in distributed systems. They are constructed by examining the causal relationships between cross-system events to determine their relative order of execution.

The Asgardians who, unbeknownst to them, were triggering quite the ruckus within SHIELD not too far away, rose from their crouches as the glow of the Bifrost faded around them.

 

There were four of them. Volstagg, the stout red-head of the group, was the first to speak. He took in their surroundings with open interest.

 

"Is it just me or does Earth look a little different to you now?"

 

"It has been a thousand years," Sif, the lone woman of the armored quartet, offered.

 

"Change happens so fast. I mean, you leave for a millennium and look at the state of the place," Volstagg said.

 

“I was expecting more ice and less desert, personally,” Fandral added, “Sand’s a nightmare to get out of the armor. I think I’m still cleaning out the odd bit of sand from the last time we went to Conjunction.”

 

“...That was two hundred and fifty years ago.” 

 

“And it shall be half a millennia more before I’m rid of it entirely.”

 

“Or maybe take on a proper armor-bearer, and eliminate the problem entirely,” Volstagg said, “Bjørn, perhaps.”

 

“Bjørn and I… aren’t exactly on speaking terms these days.”

 

“Since when?!” Volstagg asked, aghast. “He’s been your biggest fan since before he even joined the Einherjar; what’d you do, fuck his—

 

“...Oh. You fucked his sister, didn’t you?”

 

“In my defense, Asta very much lives up to her name.”

 

“I’ll bet she— hold on,” Volstagg cut himself off.

 

“Hogun! Sif!” While he and Fandral were distracted, Sif had caught Hogun’s eye, tilting her head in the direction of a small cluster of buildings in the distance. 

 

Hogun, who was vaguely Asian in appearance and the only member of the group under six feet tall, responded with a silent nod of his own. Without a word to their bickering compatriots, the duo set off for the small town that was the only break in the sameness of their surroundings.

 

Without Thor there to draw Volstagg and Fandral out of their friendly bickering through sheer force of personality, it was by far the most effective method of gaining the duo’s attention.

 

The group didn’t make it very far before they were interrupted by the approach of a red-and-gold figure.

 

+++

 

_“Any data on who these people are?”_

 

 _“In OATS the closest matches are to the Warriors Three and Sif,”_ Friday replied.

 

Tony searched his memory for the almost-but-not-quite familiar names.

 

_“Thor’s friends? Were we—?”_

 

_“—expecting them? They’re filed under Thor’s backstory, but not as ever having visited Earth in person.”_

 

Tony had no idea if their presence was—somehow—unique to this timeline, though he couldn’t even begin to guess what might have changed. Perhaps it had just never come up Before; Thor was never particularly loquacious about the details on his first visit to Midgard. Or at least, not within Tony’s earshot.

 

_“Looks like they’ve spotted us. Let’s go say hello, then.”_

 

The group of Asgardians stopped their advanced. They took on the relaxed-but-ready posture common to warriors faced with unfamiliar potential-threats. Not quite anticipating a fight—they made no sign of reaching for their weapons—but alert. Aware.

 

A decade ago, Tony might have found them legitimately unnerving.

 

He landed a short distance away from the group and released Clint.

 

“I have to admit that with all the Renaissance Fair aesthetic, I’m starting to feel a bit underdressed for the occasion,” Tony said, optimistically flipping up his faceplate as they approached.

 

“We have come to your realm in search of our shield-brother,” the booming voice of the burliest man of the bunch said, evidently favoring directness over trying to decipher the purpose behind Tony’s comment.

 

_...Admittedly, that was not an entirely unreasonable response._

 

“Oh? This friend of yours, he wouldn’t happen to be about... yea-high? Long blond hair, rather fond of his hammer?” 

 

“You know of Thor’s whereabouts?” The same man questioned.

 

“Guy like that, seems like the type to be in the middle of some heroic journey of personal growth and discovery of self-worth as hypothetically determined by a piece of sentient weaponry. He might never have mentioned he was anticipating fellowship on his quest, particularly not anyone so dear to him as a shield-brother would be,” Tony prevaricated, mostly for Clint's benefit.

 

"Aye, but he is not yet aware of the urgency of the situation at home and time is of the essence."

 

"Then explain who you are and why I and my friends here should listen to you… urgently."

 

_"Calling it now, this is because of Loki somehow."_

 

_"Not sure you'll deserve any accolades for that one, Boss."_

 

Fortunately, Thor's friends were a bit less impatient than the man himself. After a bit of back-and-forth and a round of introductions, Tony turned to Clint.

 

"Tell Agent he can call off the goons for now. They're friendlies."

 

Then, turning back to the Asgardians—

 

"Come on then, Ye Merry Band of Brothers Four, let's get you reunited with your fearless leader.

 

 _"And Friday—"_ Tony started.

 

 _"—let the Camper Van Crew know we're coming?"_ She finished.

 

_"Not the name I would have gone with, but I like it. And stop finishing my sentences, you're creeping me out."_

 

_"No I'm not."_

 

 _"No,"_ Tony admitted, _"you're not."_

 

"So. Aliens," Clint said, breaking what from his perspective must have been an awkward silence.

 

 _"If I don't tone it down on the talking to the voices I'm going to wind up with a textbook lunatic and a padded cell recommendation in my profile."_  The deliberate subvocalization was acknowledged with a brief flicker of amusement from Friday.

 

"Yup. Aliens. Hope your super-spy training included courses in interplanetary diplomacy."

 

"Must have skipped that day."

 

They made their way back to Puente Antiguo without incident. Tony considered calling ahead to warn the Camper Van Crew—

 

_So the name grew on him, what of it?_

 

—of their impending return with added guests, but decided against it.

 

Thor’s expression when he noticed just who Tony brought with him was worth it. Even if the subsequent reunion left his eardrums rattling.

 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tony said, “I’m happy for you. But right now I need to know if I should be worried about this Loki fellow coming _here.”_

 

“With father dead—” Thor began. Jane, who’d been standing off to the side watching the Asgardian’s reunion, stepped forward and gently squeezed Thor’s hand in comfort.

 

The blond, Fandral, took note of the gesture and looked ready to comment before Sif interjected—

 

“Dead? Thor, the All-Father isn’t dead.”

 

Thor looked shocked then even more pained before his expression settled into resigned understanding.

 

“Perhaps, friends, you best start at the beginning?” Thor asked.

 

And they did. 

 

Sif did the bulk of the talking. The story she wove was both fascinating and, for the most part, entirely new information. Friday was no doubt transmitting a record of the conversation back to Malibu, and either she or JARVIS were almost certainly incorporating the information into OATS in real-time.

 

They picked up with Thor’s banishment, explaining that Odin fell into “Odin-sleep” shortly after Thor’s arrival on Midgard.

 

“Although given current events, the timing is suspect enough that perhaps Loki was more directly involved in the event than previously believed,” Hogun said. Sif’s face twisted at the interruption for a moment but nodded in agreement.

 

“Your brother has always been a trickster, but as of late…” she trailed off.

 

“Sorry, but _Odin-sleep?_ What’s that?” Jane asked. Tony was curious too, but held himself back out of respect for his relationship—or rather, lack thereof—with any of the Aesir.

 

_Girlfriend privileges, I suppose._

 

_“Jealous?”_

 

A brief image of Tony in Thor’s embrace was immediately replaced by guilt because _hello, monogamous relationship with Pepper._

 

Except… he didn’t have that anymore, did he?

 

His Pepper was gone, and _dammit brain now is not the time to think about rebound fucks._

 

 _(And if he_ was _going to, Sif was_ definitely _more his type any—stop. Not the point. Or the time.)_

 

(...This better be in the mind-only or algorithmically-filtered parts of his mental narrative.)

 

Thankfully, no commentary from Friday came. Tony pushed that mound of let’s-not-and-say-we-didn’t emotion aside in favor of tuning back into the brief explanation Thor was giving. From what Tony understood, “Odin-sleep” was essentially a glorified regenerative coma Odin periodically and typically-willingly experienced.

 

From there, Sif resumed her narrative and spoke of Loki’s machinations as Regent-King—

 

 _And hell, is_ this _where the whole idea for invading Earth started? Can’t have the Realm Eternal, guess I’ll settle for the Realm Ephemeral instead?_

 

—and the quartet’s decision to come to Midgard themselves to return Thor, the rightful ruler, to the throne.

 

Frankly, if not for the whole Thanos-apocalypse coming down the pipeline with Asgard as his only link to the broader universe right now, Tony would have been happy to send them on their merry way with Thor. Maybe this time, they could avoid both this small town’s destruction and, if they were lucky, Loki’s Invasion of New York.

 

He was spared having to consider the quagmire further by Thor’s heavy sigh.

 

“I cannot return to Asgard,” he said.

 

“What? Why not?” Volstagg asked.

 

“I am not worthy. Father sent me to Midgard due to my own actions. Whilst I am still incapable of wielding Mjolnir, I have not yet learned the lessons he expects of me.”

 

“Your brother’s gone mad with power, surely Odin will understand if—when—he awakens that you had no choice!” Volstagg argued.

 

“And what use am I on Asgard now? Even should Heimdall defy the All-Father and my brother in allowing my return, I am currently as mortal as any Midgardian. My power is bound to Mjolnir.”

 

Thor’s friends looked like they wanted to argue, but evidently they recognized the stubborn look on his face well enough to remain silent.

 

Tony took the opportunity to insert himself into the conversation.

 

“...If Loki wants you out of the way, what’s to stop him from attacking you here?” he asked.

 

“It is the sworn duty of the Throne to guard the Nine Realms. He would not.”

 

The statement might have been believable if Tony didn’t know better. This was Thor before—or just as—his brother went completely off the rails. If _Tony_ was asked to question someone he’d—

 

_Stupid question. I know exactly what I did._

 

He was spared the trouble of coming up with a response by blondie’s—mustachioed blondie, that is—grim response.

 

“Your brother betrayed his sworn duty to the Nine Realms when he usurped the throne.”

 

 _“Boss! Bifrost activation!”_ Friday said.

 

A moment later, they heard the sound of a distant explosion and all hell _(Hel?)_ broke loose.

 

“Game of Thrones later. Prevent further explosions now.” Tony said. His faceplate snapped down. Clint was at his side a moment later. At some point during the conversation, Hawkeye had done as super-spies everywhere were obligated to and faded into the background.

 

Well, as much as anyone could be in the same room as an all-seeing AI.

 

 _“He was talking to Miss Lewis and Dr. Selvig,”_ Friday offered, then more seriously continued, _“The Destroyer is attacking SHIELD agents now and plotting a direct course for town.”_

 

_“Fuck. Targeting Thor?”_

 

_“In all likelihood.”_

 

“Thor, we’ve got a giant robot heading straight at you and I’d _really_ like to not be in a populated area when it finds us.”

 

“Our guys are barely slowing it down,” Clint said.

 

“Right. Dr. Foster, you still have that jeep of yours?” Tony asked, mind slipping into the battle mode honed in another lifetime.

 

“...Yes?”

 

“Take Thor. Get him far away from town as fast as the Jeep can handle. Clint, if there are any agents still in town have them start evacuating civilians. I’ll distract it. Hopefully it’ll notice Thor leaving and we’ll be able to keep any fighting from taking a town with it.” He paused in his rapid-fire instructions, remembering the four Asgardians in the room.

 

“You four probably wanna go with Thor. I’m guessing you aren’t gonna be able to keep up with super-sonic flight. Gonna aim to sync up outside town. Assuming I can’t take it solo, but let’s face it: this suit was not designed to take on Alien Terminator.”

 

 _“Liar,”_ Friday teased.

 

 _“Limited disclosure of the truth,”_ Tony countered.

 

The non-Thor Asgardians exchanged looks and turned to Thor.

 

“The Man of Iron is a well-known, experienced and reliable defender of this realm—”

 

 _“Hang on. I’m a what now?”_ Caught off-guard, Tony barely remembered to subvocalize. He missed entirely the latter half of Thor’s statement, though Friday definitely—

 

 _“Wait. No. Nevermind. Not the time. Don’t care why so long as they what.”_ Then aloud he said—

 

“Right. Dr. Foster, take this—” One of the minutemen drones broke off from the back of his suit and flew towards the frozen Doctor, “—and we’ll be in touch. Metaphorically. Unless you know Morse, I guess. Or actually. Clint? Go with them. I’m synced to your comms. Sound good? Great. Enough chatting, more doing.” Tony clapped his metallic hands together decisively.

 

Then Tony took his own advice, fired up his repulsors, and took flight.

 

In the wake of his abrupt departure, Darcy broke the silence first.

 

“Guess I get where the Hurricane Stark jokes are coming from now…” she said.

 

Jane nodded faintly.

 

Clint snorted.

 

Thor looked unsurprised.

 

+++

 

Iron Man was on the outskirts of Puente Antiguo when he got his first clear view on his thirty foot, tarnished silver target. 

 

The scene surrounding the bot was reminiscent of times best forgotten. A half-dozen vehicles formed an impromptu blockade. SHIELD agents crouched behind the wreckage and peppered the Destroyer with a constant stream of machine gun fire. A pair of mortars torpedoed the armor as frequently as the agents could reload the devices.

 

The acrid mix of melted paint, burning gas, and spent munitions assaulted Tony’s nose despite his suit filters.

 

His systems locked on their target. Tony fired a concentrated blast at the Destroyer’s chest. The explosion obscured it for a split second until a blinding golden-orange beam pierced the haze lined straight for Tony.

 

Tony swerved. 

 

_“Figures it’s got a unibeam. Weak points?”_

 

_“Not yet.”_

 

The beam followed, carving a blackened trail of—

 

_“Holy shit is that glass?”_

 

—into the desert. 

 

The Destroyer marched on.

 

_“Aaaand it takes cues from the Exorcist’s twisty head shtick too. Awesome.”_

 

For all the effect it had, Iron Man might have been shooting off BB guns and bottle rockets. It was enough, at least, to cover the outmatched agents rapid retreat.

 

 _My kingdom for a Hulkbuster,_ Tony thought.

 

_“Fresh out, Boss. Potential weak spot on its neck.”_

 

The Destroyer met his full-power repulsor blast with a full-body turn. Its right arm sparked and it halted. 

 

_“Well. Guess we got its attention now.”_

 

Tony darted in and out of close range as he dodged its attacks. He blasted potshots, distractions while he angled for a clear shot at its neck. Still it advanced, marginally slowed but undeterred. Its feet crushed the first of the car wreckage like empty aluminum.

 

_Why isn’t it changing course?_

 

His HUD flashed the minuteman’s frozen position at an intersection.

 

“Clint?! We got a holdup on the evac?”

 

His voice, or maybe updates from fellow agents, seemed to convey the appropriate urgency. The minuteman—and hopefully, a Jeep along with it—shot off. Tony’s comm crackled.

 

_“Minor disagreement over traffic laws. ETA minute thirty out of town.”_

 

_“Halve that. Bastard’s not taking the bait yet.”_

 

_“Fuck. On it.”_

 

The distraction cost Tony. The Destroyer clipped his leg and knocked out the limb’s repulsor. 

 

Tony pinwheeled. 

 

Instinct took over. 

 

He stabilized just in time for Friday to restore power.

 

_If I could trip it instead, that’d be—_

 

His eyes landed on the crumpled hood of the car the Destroyer was about to trample. Tony engaged full-body boosters and shot straight upward.

 

A heavy-ordnance bomb masked the deployment of smaller shoulder missiles. It swatted away the projectile like an irritating fly, but hitting the bot wasn’t the goal. 

 

No, he just needed it distracted for a split second.

 

A half-dozen engines detonated in unison. Tony’s eardrums popped. 

 

He cut all repulsor power. Curled inward. Locked the armor in position and instinctively closed his eyes just as the blastwave hit. 

 

The force sent him spiraling outward in a tight loop. His back and legs bore the brunt of scorching flame and shrapnel. 

 

Tony screamed. 

 

The wave passed. 

 

His suit crested its parabolic arc. 

 

Friday disengaged locks, allowing him to uncurl into a head-first plummet.

 

Then it was _Tony’s_ weapon tearing through ash and debris.

 

His unibeam hit the back of the Destroyer’s exposed neck dead on. It remained on target until, thirty feet above ground, he was forced to cut upward in the spirit of… well, _not_ hitting Earth at terminal velocity and splitting his skull.

 

He crashed at a far slower—and safer—angle a few seconds later. Skidded then, eventually, stopped.

 

Stunned and sprawled face-down in the sand. Talk about a throwback. 

 

_Stupid sand._

 

_Stupid deserts._

 

_Stupid emergency landings._

 

Tony flopped over with a long groan. His vision went white. It took several rapid blinks to clear his vision enough to interpret the litany warnings and notifications on his HUD. 

 

 _Reactor power?_ Low but recoverable. 

 

 _Flight systems?_ Probably functional.

 

 _Offensive capability?_ Drained entirely.

 

 _Defense?_ Best forget that too.

 

He snapped his faceplate up. A cloud of smog from the still-smoking battle wreckage greeted him, leading to a long series of painful, wracking coughs that did his freshly-bruised… everything… no favors.

 

When the smoke cleared enough for his eyes and lungs to remember how to function, he tried to speak.

 

“Fri, status on the Destroyer?” The gasped words came between heaving breaths. 

 

_The lack of ongoing explode-y noises had to be a good sign, right?_

 

_“Recovered 10.7 seconds after you stopped firing. Estimated 33% reduction to Destroyer’s overall functionality. Projected course tangent to Puente Antiguo.”_

 

 _“...Uh, kiddo, why’s your voice gone funny?”_ He switched to silent conversation with its significantly reduced breathing requirements.

 

_“That would be the damage to your inner ear. Also the concussion.”_

 

 _“Implant survived that? How ‘bout that.”_ Tony managed an expression at least 10% more grin than grimace.

 

_“JARVIS’s enhancements to the device are the primary reason your implant didn’t puncture through something irreparable.”_

 

 _“...Knew there’s a reason I love him. Not, I mean, that I wouldn’t love you guys even if you decided to, I’unno, ditch me and go live out your dreams of becoming a digital pop sensation touring the globe and doing concerts with some twenty-foot hologram of your digital avatar that probably also has disproportionately large eyes and…”_ Tony paused for a beat. “... _Christ I think you might be right about this concussion thing._

 

_“Also. Clint. We gotta—”_

 

_“Already radioed, Boss.”_

 

_“You...?”_

 

_“I synthesized an approximation of your vocal patterns and—”_

 

_“Smaller words. Daddy’s head is spinning too much.”_

 

 _“I pretended to be you.”_ The words sounded almost… flustered? _Why?_

 

It took Tony’s sluggish mind a few seconds to remember to reply.

 

 _“Well._ How ‘bout that,” he repeated then continued, _“Proud of you, baby girl. Suppose we ought to head their direction, huh?”_

 

 _“It’ll take at least ninety seconds to get back in the air.”_ Friday said. She _definitely_ seemed flustered now, though Tony still couldn’t think why.

 

_“‘S fine. Gonna be at least that long for me to wanna move anyway.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment before you go? <3


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